Lonely Ghosts
by EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: In which Arthur learns that no matter how much other people want to help you, sometimes the only person who can save you is yourself. Not, of course, that that means they'll stop trying, because that's what friends are for. Modern AU, eventual Merthur.
1. Prologue

**Title: **Lonely Ghosts  
**Author:** EachPeachPearPlum  
**Rating: **M (although not for a couple of chapters)  
**Warnings:** Brief mentions of domestic abuse in this one, which get more specific/detailed in later chapters (including violence, emotional abuse, and what should really count as dub-con despite the fact that characters are too unintelligent to see it that way. All of these will get their own warnings when they appear). Arthur/Valiant (yes, I think that merits a warning, because as pairings go...well, there needed to be a bad guy, and he fitted the bill).  
**Disclaimer:** I've had a kind of sucky week. If anyone out there wants to give me the rights to Merlin, it would make it seem a whole lot brighter. Nope? Okay, it's not mine.  
**Notes: **This comes with epic amounts of gratitude to Hiza Montmorency (who read this first and nagged me to do something other than leave this as a prologue and a first chapter sitting on my laptop and decaying away into nothingness), WitchWarren (who doesn't even like Merthur but who gave me a third opinion anyway) and to Kat Nightfox (whose fic _Hold on Loosely_ is in a very vague way responsible for the teeny tiny bunny that said 'oi, Peach, you should write a fic where Arthur is in an abusive relationship rather than Merlin' and then proved to be a horribly persistent teeny tiny bunny). Chapters of this are all fairly short, and I have a few of them written. Expect updates fortnightly, weekly if I'm feeling particularly needy. Please note that the title did at one point make sense (at least in the context of the lyrics below), although the plot has drifted a little since then. But anyway, let me know what you think, please? Peach.

_The devil that you know  
is better  
than the one you don't  
So like lonely ghosts at a roadside cross  
We stay because  
we don't know where else to_ go  
**Lonely Ghosts - O+S**

**Prologue**

Initially, it was just jealousy, and Arthur found it flattering. It was stupid of him; he knew what he looked like, knew that people wanted him, but he'd never had a relationship where the person he was with made it so obvious that he was theirs, and he liked it. Idiot that he was, he thought it was a sign that Val cared about him. He saw it as belonging with someone, not belonging _to_ them; he didn't know that he was just another possession, didn't realise his name was just another thing on the long list of stuff Valiant owned.

.

.

.

"Don't ever stay with a man who hits you," his mum said, once, a long time ago. The instruction was directed at Morgana, of course, not at him, which was ridiculous. Morgana didn't need to hear it; if any man laid so much as a finger on her that she didn't want him to, he'd lose it. "It doesn't matter what he says, or however much he apologises. If he hits you once, he'll do it again."

Morgana had nodded once, seriously, pressed her lips to their mother's cheek, and gone off on her way. She didn't tell her that the advice was unnecessary; they both knew that their mum had had a bad boyfriend before she met their father. She never talked about it, and they never asked, but they knew.

And then his mum had turned to him and given him the strictest look he could remember ever seeing. "If I ever hear of you raising your hand to a woman, you are no longer my son," she said, and he believed her unquestioningly. It wasn't an issue, of course – he already knew he was gay, even if he wasn't out yet – but he had agreed anyway, solemnly promising that he wouldn't.

He didn't, but then Arthur had never broken a promise to his mum.

(Promises to himself were a whole different matter)

.

.

.

Initially, it was just jealousy. Valiant would stand a little closer than necessary to him at parties, wrap his arm around him a little tighter than he had to, place love bites a little more obviously than was perhaps proper.

Arthur loved it.

(Then)


	2. It's Like Forgetting

******Title: **Lonely Ghosts**  
****Author:** EachPeachPearPlum**  
****Rating: **T/very mild M**  
****Warnings: ** Domestic abuse (minor violence, mostly emotional abuse and manipulation), bad language.**  
****Disclaimer:** It only it were, but it isn't. Plot, though, I reckon I can claim.**  
****Notes: **Yeah, chapter one. See how it goes. Leave me a review, maybe? Peach

_It's like forgetting the words  
to your favourite song.  
You can't believe it,  
you were always singing_ along.  
**Eet - Regina Spektor**

**Chapter One - It's Like Forgetting**

They'd been together for more than a month, lurking somewhere between the stage of _here, I'll clear out enough space so that you can leave some stuff here_ and the giant leap to _do you want to move in with me?_ and Arthur was content to leave it that way. Being with Val was easy, and – for the most part – uncomplicated, but there was no rush. Arthur was in love with him, and dumb enough to think that Val felt the same; they had all the time in the world for big decisions.

Arthur was supposed to meet him for lunch. He was already running a little later than he'd intended to be (punctuality was very important to Val, and Arthur always liked to be early to places anyway) when Lance phoned, freaking out about his date with Gwen that evening. Their first date, because despite the fact that he'd loved her since the very minute he saw her and she'd fallen for him not a whole lot after that (ignoring the brief crush she'd had on Merlin, of which he'd been totally ignorant, and the slightly less brief case of total adoration she'd felt for Arthur, who hadn't been quite lucky enough not to notice it), it had taken three years for him to pluck up enough courage to finally ask her out. Arthur had spent fifteen minutes talking him down from a metaphorical ledge (_oh, God, Arthur, what if this is a stupid mistake? What if she doesn't really like me, if she only agreed to be polite? What if I'm going to ruin everything?_), finally hanging up with only two minutes before he was supposed to be in the restaurant with Val.

It was only a short walk from his office, and Arthur jogged most of it, barely pausing in the reception long enough to tell Elena, his secretary, to tell Valiant he'd be there as soon as possible if he rang. He tried ringing a couple of times on the way, but it went straight through to voicemail each time, and seeing as he was so close he didn't see the point in leaving a message.

Val had had a face like thunder when he got there, out of breath and just over six and a half minutes late, but hadn't said anything in response to Arthur's slightly garbled explanation. He'd just nodded, expression grim but no longer furious, and told Arthur that he'd ordered for them both while he'd been waiting. Steak and ale pie, Arthur's favourite.

Arthur sat and watched him eat it, making stilted conversation as the scampi and chips cooled on his plate.

(Up until then, he'd been sure Val knew he didn't like prawns)

.

.

.

The first time Val hit him – an ordinary, nondescript Sunday – Arthur only felt horribly, horribly surprised.

He raised a hand to his jaw and stared at Valiant for a moment, trying to work out who this angry, red-faced man was. He raised a hand to his jaw, stared for a moment, then turned and walked out of the room and the house, climbing into his car and locking the doors before driving away, entirely on autopilot.

He went to Lancelot's, told him he and Val had had a fight, and asked if he could sleep on his sofa. It wasn't where he wanted to be, but going to Merlin's just wasn't an option. Merlin would ask questions, want to know what they'd fought about and – completely ignoring Arthur's uncertainty as to why it had happened, beyond the fact that Val had been angry since they'd left Merlin's flat that afternoon after stopping by briefly for Arthur to return a book he'd borrowed – when he finally managed to work the truth out of Arthur he'd have...Arthur didn't know, but he didn't want to find out. Lancelot just threw a pillow at him, then passed him the second x-box controller and a cold beer

Arthur held it his already swelling jaw, grateful that Lance had allowed him to avoid the indignity of an ice pack, and that was that.

(That should have been that)

.

.

.

Val phoned five times that evening, left three voicemails, and sent fifteen texts. Arthur deleted them all without opening them.

He deleted every message the day after, too, spending his time alternating between sitting on the sofa staring into space and standing in the bathroom trying to make sense of how such an impressive mess of colours could hurt so much. Not physically, because he'd had plenty of bruises before, from rugby and fencing and generally mucking around with the guys. This hurt was all in his head. Lance took his key and went over to Arthur's flat to pick up a few changes of clothes when it became apparent that Arthur didn't plan on leaving anytime soon. He still didn't ask.

(Arthur tried not to hate him for that)

.

.

.

He deleted messages from Val for three days, kipping on Lance's couch. The bruise faded and so did his anger, leaving only confusion and uncertainty.

That was why he said yes, he thought, when he left work one evening to find Val on the doorstep of his office block offering to buy him a coffee and explain.

The coffee was sweet, the way he liked it, and so was Val.

Arthur drank three cups – milk, one sugar, brown not white – and listened to what he had to say, his words spoken in a voice so much more patient and gentle than that he normally used.

"You know how angry I get," Val said, and Arthur did know.

"You know I can be jealous sometimes," he said, and Arthur knew that too, played it up sometimes when they were out, flirting with strangers just to see the evidence of how very much Val cared for him.

"You know it's only because I care about you so much," he said, and Arthur felt something warm curling up in the place that had been cold since Valiant painted colours on his face, angry red fading through melancholy purple-blue to become a sickly yellow-green-brown.

"You know I love you," he said, and the warm thing grew hotter, making Arthur forget about the punch for the first time since it happened. "Too much, sometimes, so much that I want you all to myself. I couldn't bear for someone else to have you, Arthur. You know that."

"I do," Arthur told him, as sincerely as he was able to. "I'm sorry." He swallowed the dregs of his coffee and patted his mouth dry with the paper napkin lying on the tray before standing and offering a hand out to Val. "I love you too."

.

.

.

Lance's phone rang three times before he picked it up, sounding worried as he asked Arthur where he was, and why he wasn't back yet.

Arthur told Lance that he was going back home – almost the truth, because he as good as lived at Val's half the week anyway – and told himself that he imagined the concern in Lance's voice as he said goodbye and hung up the phone, all without protest.

(He failed at not hating Lancelot for that as well)

.

.

.

Arthur and Valiant did not make love. The slept together, shagged, bumped uglies, buggered, fucked...hell, give Arthur a letter of the alphabet and he could probably come up with something that described what they did and _made love_ just wasn't one of them.

Except for that night. That night it was tentative, gentle, and so unbearably, unbelievably slow. Val was tender, giving, and Arthur remembered all the reasons he fell in love with him in the first place, felt the remaining flicker of hesitant uncertainty about going back home with Val let him go.

There weren't candles and flowers and copious apologies, because that was never their style. It was just the two of them, together, and a warmth in Arthur's chest that he knew he wouldn't ever be able to tell anyone about because it would somehow make its way to Merlin who would raise an eyebrow at him in a _who's the girl now? _way and Arthur would never be able to live it down.

That night, making love was pretty much the only accurate description for it.

(That night, and all the other ones that followed fresh bruises)

.

.

.

Arthur told himself quite firmly that he wasn't feeling worried, wary or concerned as he picked the phone up. He was lying, of course, but seeing as he didn't say it out loud no one else had to know that.

"Oh," Merlin said, his surprise audible, after Arthur's semi-reluctant greeting. "I was expecting it to go to voicemail again. You've been avoiding me."

"I have _not_," Arthur replied vehemently, even though he had and everyone knew it. Lancelot had actually called him on it – _Lancelot_, for God's sake, whose middle name should really have been Non-Confrontational – and threatened to tell Merlin that Arthur had been sleeping on his sofa with a hideous bruise on his face – he knew, without Arthur having to say a thing about it, why it wasn't Merlin's floor he'd been occupying, but then Lance often put just as much effort into protecting Merlin as Arthur did – if Arthur didn't answer the next time Merlin phoned. "I've just been busy with work," he continued, with enough force that he almost managed to convince himself he hadn't heard Merlin's disbelieving snort, which essentially meant that it didn't exist.

"Very busy, I assume. Which is why Elena told me you weren't in your office when I rang on Monday, lied and said you were out Tuesday and Wednesday, and finally broke down yesterday and said you'd told her not to put my calls through, yes?"

Damn, Arthur really hated the impulse that had told him to trust Merlin's judgement when it came to hiring yet another secretary. It was hardly his fault that the ones he picked had a tendency to quit within a couple of weeks – the length of time it took most women to accept that he was gay, according to Morgana, while Merlin just said it was how long it took people to realise his good looks didn't do a thing to make up for his godawful personality – and Merlin had no right to stick his nose in. Sure, Elena was sweet as anything, and remarkably efficient for how spatiotemporally unaware she was, but she also had an excessive level of fondness for Merlin and a complete inability to be dishonest.

"Okay, fine," he muttered, sinking low in his office chair like Merlin could see him. "I don't want to talk to you every single day, _Mer_lin. Don't be-"

"Such a girl," Merlin finished for him with a familiar tone of long-sufferance. "Whatever, Arthur. I only called today to tell you that you better still be coming out for drinks with us tonight, whether or not you're going to acknowledge my existence."

The look he imagined was on Merlin's face right then, some mix of exasperation – but then when didn't Merlin look exasperated around him? – and hurt, made Arthur feel just a little bit guilty, but by the time he found the right words to substitute for an apology, Merlin had hung up, his long, tired sigh replaying in Arthur's mind for the rest of the afternoon.

.

.

.

Merlin forgave him, obviously, because that was what Merlin did. He didn't even try get an explanation out of Arthur, just acted like everything was normal and let Arthur do the same.

By the time he dropped Merlin – such a ridiculous lightweight: only the one pint, and everyone agreed he was too silly to be driving safely – off at his house, Arthur had almost forgotten it wasn't.


	3. City of Delusion

**Title:** Lonely Ghosts  
**Author:** Peach  
**Rating:** T  
**Warnings:** Folly, mostly.  
**Disclaimer:** If it were mine, everyone would have stayed the same characters they were in the first series. And Gwaine would have far more screen time, too, complete with entirely necessary shirtlessness and hair tosses.  
**Notes: **Chapter two, here we go. Don't suppose there's any chance people want to offer comments on it? Next one in a fortnight, I think. Love, Peach.

_Stay away from me  
Build a fortress  
And shield your_ _beliefs_  
**City of Delusion - Muse**

**Chapter Two - City of Delusion  
**

"You should stay here," Val said one evening, the pair of them sat on the sofa with plates of curry on their laps and the TV droning mindlessly in the background.

"I hadn't planned on going anywhere," Arthur replied, just a little confused. It was ten o'clock at night, and he was probably two glasses of red wine over the legal limit, after all, and he'd never waited for an invitation to stop over in the past.

Val stared at him in a way that made Arthur feel every bit as intelligent as blonds were supposed to be. "Your lease runs out soon, doesn't it? Stay here when it does."

It was less an invitation than an instruction, maybe, but the look in Val's eyes was intent, intense, insistent. It made Arthur feel good, wanted – powerful, almost, because anyone who could hold all the attention of someone like Val had to be powerful – and he put very little thought into the matter before answering. "Sure," he agreed. "I've got just under a month left, I think. I'll get the guys to help me move everything."

.

.

.

It didn't take too much effort to persuade everyone to help Arthur pack up his stuff, just the offer of pizza and beer that evening at Valiant's – Arthur and Valiant's, Arthur corrected himself, and felt a thrill of anticipation.

(With hindsight, maybe it was more like fear, but the thing about hindsight was that you didn't get it until afterwards)

And so, the last Saturday before Arthur's lease was up, they were all there in his flat: Leon, Val and Percival moving furniture; Elyan and Gwaine on books, DVDs and CDs; Gwen and Lance wrapping crockery in bubblewrap in the kitchen before passing it to Morgana and Morgause, her 'sister' – they called each other that, odd as it seemed to Arthur, who felt absolutely no desire to claim a blood relation with Merlin, his best mate for far longer than Morgana and Morgause had even known each other – to box; Merlin claiming to be packing clothes but actually just getting under everyone's feet. On the plus side, Merlin managed not to be quite as much an obstacle as Cenred, long time on-again/off-again boyfriend of Morgause and mates with Val – it was at a party held by Morgause and Cen during one of their good periods that Arthur had met him, actually – who seemed to be watching Arthur. He wasn't, obviously, because that would just be creepy, but he managed to pop up everywhere Arthur went – Arthur was supervising, of course, rather than doing an actual packing, per se – within seconds of him getting there.

Arthur ignored it as much as he could, until such a time as he had to rescue Merlin from what was very nearly an unfortunate run-in with the dining room table, and figured it was safer to put him in charge of boxing up the contents of the bathroom cupboard – there was no room for anyone to carry large and heavy objects through there, and trips to A&E really weren't on the agenda for the day – and moved on to packing his clothes himself. Cenred vanished then, and Arthur spent a fair few minutes relishing the reestablishment of his personal space as he removed his shirts from their hangers and folded them neatly, until a spate of cursing broke out from the living room and the resulting investigation and explanation – Gwaine had dropped a relatively light box on his toes and deemed it appropriate to swear like a sailor – took them through to lunchtime.

.

.

.

Arthur had almost forgotten about Cen's disconcerting spate of stalking by the time they had all finished eating a quickly produced batch of sandwiches and he found himself being dragged into the kitchen by Lance to dry up the plates and glasses Lance was washing.

"Are you sure about this?" Lancelot asked softly, handing him a slightly soapy plate.

"I'd have preferred to wash, actually," Arthur replied as he wiped the plate dry and placed it on the stack on the table waiting to be packed. He would in fact have preferred no such thing – drying was bad enough, but he hated sticking his hands into the bowl of washing up water, all bubbly and full of floating crumbs and..._things_. No, thank you; Arthur would prefer to kiss a snake, venomous fangs and flicky forked tongue included – but he quite liked the idea of pretending not to have a clue what Lance meant; it was preferable to talking about it, at any rate, and he'd found feigning ignorance had worked pretty well all the other times Lance had tried to raise the subject.

He waited for another plate, looking up from the steadily popping splodge of bubbles on the draining rack that he'd chosen to focus on when nothing was placed in his hand. Lance was staring at him, exasperated creases on his forehead and the corners of his mouth turned downwards. "That wasn't what I meant, Arthur," he said, pulling the next plate out from the bowl and scrubbing at the streak of marmite – Merlin's, then, because he was the only person Arthur knew who willingly ate the obnoxious substance and the sole reason for its existence in Arthur's cupboards – on it. "Do you think it's a good idea to move in with Valiant?"

"It was one fight, Lancelot," Arthur told him firmly, glancing across the room to check the door was still completely closed. "All couples have them, even ones as disgustingly in love as you and Gwen."

"Maybe, but Gwen and I have never had a fight that left one of us with bruises and sleeping on someone else's sofa while attempting to dodge calls from our best friend." Lance's voice was still quiet, not a whole lot louder than a whisper, but the concern in it was rapidly being displaced by umbrage. He handed over the next plate, giving Arthur an excuse to look away from him again.

"She's a girl, though, isn't she? It's not the same thing."

"Don't give me that, Arthur. Abuse is abuse, no matter if you're male or female."

Arthur's head snapped up and around to face Lancelot, the plate slipping from his hands and clattering against the edge of the worktop on its way to hitting to the floor with a shockingly loud sound, the tea towel dropping inelegantly on top of it. "Get out," Arthur said.

(If he hated Lancelot for not trying to intervene earlier, he hated himself more for preventing him when he did)

"I'm just trying to help," Lancelot insisted, reaching out a hand to place on Arthur's shoulder. "Arthur, please think about-"

Arthur smacked his hand away before it could reach him, the noise just as loud as the plate/ground impact had been. "Get. Out," he repeated, voice rising in volume even as it sank in pitch. "I don't want to see you here again."

"I-" Lance began, still not getting the message; Arthur stormed across to the door and yanked it open, hoping to help him out a little.

"Is everything okay?" a very startled Merlin asked, hand approaching the space that had been occupied by the door handle only a moment before.

"Everything's fine, _Mer_lin," Arthur snapped. He was fully aware that Merlin didn't deserve it, of course, and entirely unable to prevent himself from doing it anyway. "Lance was just leaving."

Merlin glanced from one of them to the other, nodding slowly despite his obvious confusion. "Okay then," he agreed, stepping into the kitchen to make room for Lancelot to exit and squeezing Arthur's forearm gently as he passed him. He made no comment about the long stare Lance fixed Arthur with before leaving, or the stubborn way Arthur refused to break it. "See you later, Lance," he added, then walked over to the sink and started rolling up his sleeves in order to finish the washing up.

"Leave it," Arthur said, suddenly so very grateful to have Merlin's support. Useless, idiotic Merlin, who would never make such ridiculous accusations, who always stood by him, always knew exactly what to do to make Arthur feel better. He picked up the plate and tea towel from the floor, adding the plate to the stack on the table and pushing the towel into Merlin's hands. "I'll wash, you dry."

.

.

.

Lancelot – and, by extension, Gwen, since their few months of togetherness meant that they were pretty much joined at the hip – left far quicker than Arthur had been expecting them to, and with very little in the way of explanation. He should probably have been grateful for that fact, but the party atmosphere vanished with them, despite Arthur's best – and slightly desperate – efforts to get it back.

It took an ungodly amount of booze and eight extra large pizzas – ostensibly enough to feed them all with some left over for breakfast the following day, but Arthur failed to take into account the fact that Percival's stomach was essentially a bottomless pit and that Merlin could put away more food than anyone as skinny as him ought to be capable of – for a similar level of cheer to re-emerge, and even then the evening ended far earlier than Arthur had been expecting it to, with people departing in twos and threes as soon as the food was eaten.

"Look," Merlin said softly as he stood by the open front door with Arthur. He was the last one to leave, and Arthur suspected he'd hung back deliberately to share whatever it was that was important enough for the pair of them to lurk in the hallway, ignoring both Val's attempts to hide his eavesdropping under the guise of tidying up the living room and the way Gwaine tapped his foot impatiently as he leant against his car with his keys in his hands, waiting to provide Merlin with his ride home. "Whatever Lance said, I'm sure he didn't mean to upset you."

"Lancelot didn't say anything, _Mer_lin."

Merlin's slight smile turned into a deeply sceptical expression. "In that case, you should probably apologise for kicking him out of your house for no reason," he replied, in his well-practised _you do know that I know you're lying to me, don't you?_ tone.

Of course, the tone had much the same effect on Arthur that it usually did, in that he felt no need whatsoever to tell the truth just because he'd been called on his dishonesty. "I hardly kicked him out, Merlin. He had to be somewhere urgently, and it's really not my fault that he forgot about it until the last minute."

"Arthur, I-"

"I think Gwaine is waiting for you," Val cut in, placing a hand at the small of Arthur's back as he joined them in the hallway. "It wouldn't do to keep him hanging around too long." Arthur settled into the hand willingly, grateful for Val's minor, Merlin-directed hostility, despite how irrational he usually considered it to be.

Merlin's eyes lingered on his a moment longer, presumably waiting for Arthur to contradict his words or offer some sort of explanation. When it became apparent nothing was forthcoming, Merlin nodded, narrowed his eyes at Arthur in his equally well-practised _don't think I'm going to drop this just because you've found some way to wriggle out of it this time_ look, and then turned an absurdly bright smile on Valiant like the man wasn't in the process of unceremoniously booting him from the house. "Of course," he agreed, sticking out his hand and resolutely not flinching when Val shook it. "I'll see you next week, Arthur. Have a good weekend."

"Goodnight, Merlin," Arthur replied, waiting until both he and Gwaine were in the car before closing and locking the front door, leaning against it with a relieved sigh.

He looked up when he felt Val's eyes on him, his frown melting into something heated and heavy in a way that had Arthur trying to suppress a shiver. "Thought they were never going to leave," he murmured, stepping forwards and bracketing Arthur's hips with his hands. "So how'd you want to spend the first night in your new home?"

Arthur grinned, forcibly pushing all thoughts of Lancelot and Merlin and awkward, unwanted, _unnecessary_ conversations from his mind. "I reckon I've got a few ideas," he replied, peeling away from the door and wrapping a hand around Val's neck as he leaned in for a kiss.

.

.

.

It was only when he was trying to find space in Val's cupboards for his crockery days later that Arthur realised the plate was cracked almost in half.

(How it didn't break, he had no idea)


	4. Falling's Not the Problem

**Title:**Lonely Ghosts  
**Author:** Peach  
**Rating: **T? M?  
**Warnings:** Um. A bargain that to anyone other than Arthur is clearly a terrible idea? Not really sure.  
**Disclaimer:** Merlin is not mine, nor is the song.  
**Notes:** Please review? Please? Much gratitude to _zara_, who did so anonymously last chapter. Next one three weeks from now, I think. Also, you know, _please_? Peach.

_Sometimes I wish for falling_  
_ Wish for the release_  
_ Wish for falling through the air_  
_ To give me some relief_  
_ Because falling's not the problem_  
_ When I'm falling I'm in peace_  
_ It's only when I hit the ground_  
_ It causes all the grief  
_**Falling - Florence + the Machine**

**Chapter Three - Falling's Not the Problem  
**

Two weeks later, Lancelot apologised. They both knew he didn't mean it, but Merlin was there and he didn't like it when his friends argued.

Arthur had always thought it was just because Merlin didn't know how to negotiate the difficult terrain of not mentioning one person in front of the other one without it looking like he was doing it deliberately, but in that fortnight Merlin didn't once talk about Lancelot with him. He even managed to make conversations involving Gwen seem natural, despite the fact that she and Lancelot were so happily together that Arthur couldn't remember the last time he'd seen one without the other, which led him to believe that all the other times Merlin had failed at obeying the _we don't talk about them anymore_ rule were entirely deliberate.

He'd never appreciated how tactful Merlin could be until that fortnight. Nor, for that matter, had he really appreciated how well Merlin understood him, when his gentle, grateful punch on his shoulder was met not with a wince – as was Merlin's usual response, when Arthur used it as a greeting or farewell – but with a grin and a nod.

Afterwards, when Merlin had decided they were all friends again and that the pair of them could be left without supervision, Lancelot told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't sorry, because he didn't think that he'd done anything wrong.

"Come for dinner with us," Arthur said in response. "You and Gwen, me and Val, Merlin and...we'll find someone for Merlin to bring. We can go out, and you can see just how stupid what you thought was."

Lance looked doubtful, but agreed anyway. Arthur suspected it was probably because he didn't want to face Merlin if he refused and he and Arthur argued again, but that was good enough. Lance would see just how happy he and Val were together, and stop being such an idiot.

(If he'd been looking for reassurance for himself with that plan, it had failed miserably)

.

.

.

Val groused about the dinner, but then Val groused about a lot of things, particularly those that involved him having to spend time with Merlin. There weren't many people who didn't take to Merlin immediately and those who didn't tended to find that he grew on them – Arthur had been one of them, which was how he knew – but of the few people he'd met who genuinely and seriously didn't like his best friend, Valiant was probably the one who was most stubborn about it. Arthur had asked, once or twice, why Val disliked him so violently, but had given up after a couple of snapped responses; it wasn't worth the bother, not when he clearly didn't want to answer, and pressing the matter would only end in an argument.

"Look," Arthur said. "It's one evening with my friends. I'm not asking a lot, Val."

"One evening with _your _friends," Val replied, unwilling to bend. "Your friends who can't stand me."

Arthur pulled his head out from their wardrobe and his attempt to find a suitable tie. "Well, maybe if you weren't such a grumpy git with them all the-" he began, cutting himself short. Val had never taken well to the name-calling Arthur used to show his affection, seeing it as an insult in a way most people who knew Arthur knew not to. "Do this for me, please?" he requested after a moment, an edge of uncertainty to his tone. "I'll owe you one."

"And what is that _one_ going to be?" Val asked, drawing him back from the wardrobe with a hand on his wrist, grip a little tighter than he probably meant it to be. He leaned in and down, pulling Arthur close to him, eyes dark with something heavier than want.

Arthur felt a tug in his stomach, like strings pulled tight around his insides, pressing himself against Valiant and nuzzling against his neck. "Anything," he promised, teeth grazing Val's earlobe, then stepped back quickly. "It'll have to wait until we get home, though, otherwise we'll be late."

Val nodded, slowly, as Arthur went back to his hunt for a tie. His gaze was still intent, weighty, and Arthur found himself slipping into the bathroom to change rather than dressing in their bedroom without being entirely sure why.

(He told himself that, anyway)

.

.

.

Merlin brought Gwaine to their dinner.

Arthur had offered to set him up with someone, a guy from his rugby team or one of the new girls from his office – the secretaries and receptionists were constantly changing –, but Merlin had said no, he could find his own date. And he could, Arthur knew that, but he _hadn't_, because Gwaine didn't count. Gwaine was a friend, not a date, and even if Merlin and he did have some sort of arrangement whereby they sometimes got together if they were both between partners, Merlin had never presented it as anything other than a friends-with-benefits thing on the very, very rare occasions it had come up in conversation.

But there they were, _together_, laughing at their own jokes, whispering in each other's ears, and Gwaine was entirely too handsy for a public place.

Arthur didn't like it, and he didn't like not knowing why he didn't like it even more.

Beyond that, though, the evening went well. Val was more than polite, despite having complained about the whole event ever since Arthur had told him about it – carefully not mentioning why, of course, because he didn't think Val would take well to accusations of the sort Lancelot had made. He made easy conversation with Lance, Gwen and Gwaine, and even managed to ask Merlin a couple of questions without making it sound like he wished Arthur's best friend was a long, long way away from them all.

It went well, even with Val's hand heavy on Arthur's thigh under the table, fingertips tracing lines down the inner seam of his smartest pair of black trousers, running from his knee to the edge of inappropriate and back again, stilling occasionally and squeezing tightly, reminding Arthur of his promise. That was how it felt, at least, and the flutter of butterflies in Arthur's stomach that had been building since he had offered Val _anything_ in exchange for joining them all that evening were getting really quite uncomfortable, excitement and apprehension filling him equally.

"Was everything okay with your meals, sirs, madam?" their waitress asked, smiling brightly as she exchanged their dessert plates for the bill, tucked neatly into a small leather case.

"Excellent, thanks," Merlin replied, grinning back at her with just as much force, digging into his pocket for money when she turned back to the kitchen.

Gwaine stilled his hands with his own, and his mouth with a very pointed look. "I've got it," he said decisively, putting down enough money to cover his and Merlin's meals, on top of the notes already placed there by Lance and Arthur, and Arthur wasn't fond of the way Merlin just gave in, either. Merlin didn't have a whole lot – not compared to Arthur, at least, who had family money and a job high up in the family company, or Lance, who worked his arse off to get through law school with stellar grades and got a job with one of the top firms in the country, or Gwaine, who certainly seemed to do sweet FA at the place he was at but got paid a mint for it – but he never accepted anything from the rest of them, refused point blank whenever Arthur tried to pay for drinks or food for him when they went places. And then Gwaine offered, and Merlin didn't even put up a fight about it.

Val's hand tightened momentarily on Arthur's leg, then let go completely; Arthur started slightly, blinking out of his mild glare and returning his attention to the rest of the table, busy standing and pulling on coats. He joined them, accepting a quick hug from Gwen, and a slightly longer one from Merlin, although, unlike Gwen's, his wasn't accompanied by a kiss on the cheek, thank God. Gwaine went with a handshake and a slightly stiff nod – he, like far too many of Arthur's friends, was friends with him for no reason beyond the fact that Merlin was, and if Merlin decided tomorrow that he never wanted to speak to Arthur again, Gwaine would do the same without a second thought – although he had no problem with hugging Lancelot and pressing a brief kiss to Gwen's hand, who giggled, shoved him away gently, and laced her fingers with Lance's.

Lance, who responded to Arthur's single raised eyebrow with a nod, the almost-imperceptible creases deepening on his forehead as his eyes flickered from Arthur's face to the arm Valiant had draped over his shoulders as he waited out Arthur's goodbyes.

.

.

.

"I hope you know," Val murmured in his ear as they crossed the car park. "I plan on collecting as soon as we get back."

.

.

.

Valiant drove home quickly, hand wandering the length of Arthur's thigh again, no longer bound by the rules of propriety, leaving Arthur breathless and achingly hard, then lost and bereft each time a gear change was required and his hand moved away.

Their shoes were off only seconds after closing and locking the front door, Val's tie abandoned alongside the buttons from Arthur's shirt halfway down the hall to the kitchen, Arthur's own tie looped around his wrists and pulled tight as Val pressed kisses to his mouth and love-bites to his neck and actual bites to his shoulders, hard but not quite breaking the skin, nothing Arthur couldn't handle.

(Yet)


	5. In the Mirror

**Title: **Lonely Ghosts  
**Author: **EachPeachPearPlum  
**Rating:** T/M  
**Warnings:** Language, minimal and largely unintentional (?) violence, references to adult situations, ill-timed authorial attempts to inject some humour into this thing.  
**Disclaimer:** Merlin's not mine. Nor, for that matter, is Mario, and I am not any part of U2.  
**Notes:** So I haven't been too well lately. As a result, this is the only thing getting updated on time, and that's only because I had this chapter already written, just in need of tidying. Next one three weeks from now, maybe, unless I find myself embracing an intense need to have it up sooner. Much gratitude to Anonymous for the review, and any and all comments are much appreciated. Seriously, people, please, because waking up tomorrow morning with even just one chunky review would make my week. But, regardless, I wish you well until the next one. Peach.

_And it's you when I look in the mirror  
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone  
Sometimes you can't make it on your own.  
_**Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own - U2**

**Chapter Four - In The Mirror  
**

"Arthur?" Morgana called, with the air of someone who had repeated her question several times already.

He blinked at her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and forced a tired smile onto his face. "Yeah?" he asked, then blinked a second time, bringing the exasperated lines on her face into full focus. "Sorry, you said something?"

"Honestly, brother," she said, looping her right arm through his left and pulling him gently from the waiting area of the restaurant they visited every Tuesday morning for family brunch into the main room. "Father's here, and our table is ready. Do you listen to anything?"

"Why would I?" Arthur replied, striving for the sarcastic dryness he usually had with Morgana. "I have you to listen for me, sister dear."

And, apparently, he succeeded, because she rolled her eyes before pasting a smile on her face. Arthur smothered a yawn, tugged the collar of his polo neck jumper a little higher – it wasn't going to fool anyone, of course, but there was no way he was dining with his father with the marks on his neck clearly on display – and prepared to meet the one-man firing squad that was Uther.

.

.

.

Arthur winced, batted Morgana's elbow away from his side, and smiled. "I quite agree, Father," he said, no idea _what_ he was agreeing to, but Morgana was nodding subtly and that was good enough for him. His mind was elsewhere, anyway; what little of it was actually awake was trying to work out just when his sister's elbows had become so spectacularly pointy, because he was sure it hadn't hurt quite that much any of the other times she'd jabbed him in the stomach to get his attention at one of their utterly tedious brunches. "Excuse me a minute, please," he murmured, standing and folding his napkin beside his plate. "I'll be right back."

.

.

.

The man in the mirror didn't look like him. That was Arthur's first thought.

His hair was a little dishevelled, staticky, but then that was to be expected given that he'd just tugged his jumper over his head, draping it over the radiator by the sinks, then shed his t-shirt. The shadows under his eyes, deep as bruises, were expected as well, but although he'd known they were there he hadn't realised quite how bad they were until then. And his neck, shoulders and – when he twisted painfully to look at it – back all bore more marks, ones that he'd still been anticipating but looked so many times worse under the fluorescent lights of the men's bathroom. Val's fingerprints on his left hip, thumbprint on his back, fainter but still there.

His stomach was the worst, though, a broad, purplish-blue band, splodged red in places, running from one side to the other just below his navel. He brushed a tentative hand over it, and oh God it hurt, so much so that he found it hard to believe he hadn't noticed it yet, had managed to shower and dress and put on a seatbelt all without realising.

He looked awful, tired and bruised and _awful_. He looked like someone who'd been used and abused and lain sleepless all night.

He looked weak, like a victim, and it sickened him.

.

.

.

"Arthur?" Morgana's voice called from the other side of the bathroom door, and Arthur tore his eyes from the not-him in the mirror to stare at it. "Arthur, are you in there? Father sent me to check on you, you've been gone ages."

"I'm here," he answered, voice shaky. "I'll be out in a minute."

He scrambled for his shirt, had it halfway over his head when Morgana said, "I'm coming in," and proceeded to do just that.

"_Morgana!_" he snarled, yanking his t-shirt the rest of the way down, so grateful that his back was to her. "Do you not understand what the little stick_ man_ on the door means?"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Arthur," she muttered, eyes wide, and it clicked that while she was behind him, she could see his front in his reflection perfectly well, had seen most of his chest and back before he got his shirt on. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Nothing," he answered, and it sounded so horribly defensive, grabbing his jumper and wrestling that on as well.

By the time it was on properly, collar tugged up to hide every single mark on his neck, Morgana had walked into the room fully, letting the door close behind her, and was reaching out a tentative hand to him. "Arthur, did Valiant do that to you?"

"No," he snapped, and it was the truth, or certainly half of it. Because yes, Val had bound his wrists, and yes, Val had bent him over the island in the middle of the kitchen, and yes, Val had fucked him so hard that his legs had felt coltish and new, unable to hold him up, but Arthur hadn't said no. Arthur had said a _lot_ of things, most of them blasphemous, and none of them had even come close to the word _stop_, even when each thrust had slammed his stomach into the island, too high to bend over comfortably and the loop of his tie around his wrists too tight for him to brace himself properly, when the grip Val had on his side became painful, when it hurt almost as much as it felt good.

"Arthur," Morgana repeated, uncharacteristically gentle. "Arthur, marks like that don't just come from nowhere." She stared, closed the distance between her hand and Arthur's upper arm so slowly, like she expected him to flinch, or maybe to run away. "Is this," she began, and then hesitated a moment – again, so very much not like her – before continuing. "Is this what Lance meant, when he said I should keep an eye on you?"

"Goddamnit, Morgana, Lancelot doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about," Arthur growled at her, and he was so, so glad about that, because up until he'd said it he'd been expecting the words to come out as a shout. "Not that my relationship with Valiant is any of your business, little sister, but trust me when I say that I wasn't complaining at the time." He tugged at his collar one last time, smoothed a hand through his hair, and left her standing in the men's bathroom, staring at his back.

.

.

.

"Lancelot," Arthur said later that afternoon, when the sterile, almost-mechanical woman's voice on his friend's answer machine told him to leave his message after the beep. "This is Arthur. I'm just phoning to ask you to keep whatever ridiculous opinions you may have to yourself, and not involve my sister in them. There's no need for you to call me back."

Hanging up didn't feel half as satisfactory as he'd thought it would.

.

.

.

He slept in a t-shirt and boxers that night, and the two nights afterwards, until the bruise looked less violent. Val didn't say anything, just curled up next to him, pressing gentle kisses to his neck and resting an arm lightly over his waist.

Arthur told himself it was because he didn't want Val to see it in its full glory, didn't want Val to feel guilty or like he had to apologise. Val hadn't done anything wrong, he stated firmly – more than once, although never outside the confines of his own mind – not when Arthur hadn't made any attempt to stop him.

(What he didn't admit, then, was that he didn't know if Val would have felt any remorse at all)

.

.

.

"Look what I've found," Merlin announced when Arthur opened the door to him on Friday evening, shoving the large cardboard box in his hands at Arthur's chest. "Well, not me," he continued, kicking off his shoes and walking into Arthur and Val's house like he owned it, the same way he had always walked into anywhere that Arthur lived. "I was helping Mum clean out the attic last night, and, let me tell you, she keeps _everything_. Most of the stuff up there's completely useless – rubbish and broken things and there's about three boxes of all my school report cards, just in case some future employer needs to know that I had a lisp up until I was six and couldn't spell my name until months after all the other kids could. Problems with the _l _and the _r_, really, took everyone calling me Melrin for a week for me to fix it. But anyway, Gwaine found this one and I had to bring it here."

"Gwaine found it?" Arthur asked, because in the years he'd known Merlin, he'd learned to pick out the important details from his babbled speeches, and right now that one was sticking in his mind more than the rest.

Merlin nodded, grinned, and ambled into the kitchen, helping himself to a glass of water before answering. "He was bored, so I dragged him with me to help – did you know he's actually good at helping, if you offer him the right incentive?" He laughed, waggling his eyebrows to indicate just what the offered incentive had been, even though Arthur really didn't need it. There was something so very, very wrong about that sentence, about Merlin offering sex in exchange for some favour from Gwaine, despite the fact that Arthur had done the same with Val at the beginning of the week, and Arthur felt something like...concern. Worry. _Fear_.

It wasn't the same thing, though, he told himself, because Gwaine would never hurt Merlin, not in a million years. But then it wasn't like Val had intended to hurt him, wasn't like Val even knew that he had and, God, what was wrong with Arthur, that he couldn't stop thinking about this?

He pushed those horribly confusing thoughts from his mind and focused on Merlin, who was now walking into the living room and flinging himself down in a heap on the sofa, telling Arthur to look in the box.

Arthur followed him, setting the box down on the coffee table and staring at it warily; this was Merlin, after all. There could be anything inside it, and only the fact that he hadn't felt any movement prevented Arthur from imagining he'd see some poor injured animal in there, a waif or stray Merlin had taken in with the intention of fixing up. Then again, there weren't any air holes in the box, so if it was an animal there wouldn't be any movement, would there, and now Arthur was faced with the possibility of trying to cheer Merlin up about the unfortunate suffocation of his new furry/feathered/scaly – dear God, he hoped it didn't have scales – best friend.

"Hurry up, would you?" Merlin prompted, fidgeting like an overexcited child. "It's not going to bite, I promise."

_Well, no_, Arthur thought; _you've already killed it_. Thankfully, he had the good sense not to say it, tentatively peeling back the tape and opening the flaps to reveal a tangled mess of cables and a smallish, grey plastic box. His first emotion was relief, followed pretty quickly by confusion, which cleared up when he removed the plastic thing and saw the game cartridge with the picture of a pair of very familiar Italian plumbers on it. "Is this-"

"My SNES?" Merlin cut in, before Arthur could get the words out, now actually bouncing up and down in his spot on the sofa. "Yeah, isn't it awesome?"

Arthur rolled his eyes, trying not to get caught up in Merlin's enthusiasm even as he recalled so many afternoons spent in Merlin's living room playing Super Mario Bros. when they were kids, attempting to one-up each other. _I can complete this level faster than you_, Arthur would argue, then go on to demonstrate that fact – or not, as the case sometimes was, because even if he wasn't as naturally competitive, Merlin never let him win. _Bet you can't do the next one without dying_, one of them would say, then spend the next however many minutes attempting to distract the other into sending their player (Arthur was always Mario, Merlin accepting Luigi or Toad – never Peach, God forbid – with a longsuffering sigh) to an untimely grave. And, on very rare occasions, there was an _oh, give me that_, before they'd yank the controller from the other's hands to help complete a particularly hard one rather than hinder as much as possible.

"Does it still work?" Arthur asked, almost against his will.

"Dunno," Merlin shrugged. "I haven't tried it yet; I wanted you to be around when I did, seeing as you were there when I first got it." He grinned, just as stupidly as he had over a decade and a half ago when he'd opened the present from his dad on his tenth birthday – the only present Arthur could remember Merlin ever getting from Balinor, and one of very few times he could actually think of when Merlin's father had actually been spoken of – and sprang to his feet. "You want to give it a go?"

Arthur rolled his eyes again, but nodded. He'd always been powerless to resist Merlin's excitement, and now seemed a pretty poor place to start, particularly when he was flushed with warmth at the fact that Merlin had wanted to share this with him instead of Gwaine. "Sure," he agreed. "Help me set it up."

Val wouldn't be back for a couple of hours, anyway, and Merlin would be gone before then.

(Even before he'd managed to work out why that was important, he knew that it was)


	6. Fun and Games

**Title: **Lonely Ghosts  
**Author:** EachPeachPearPlum  
**Rating: **M  
**Warnings:** pfft. Usual. Language. Sex. Violence. Other?  
**Disclaimer: **If I owned it, I'd be able to tell you when series five starts. As it is...anyone else have any idea?  
**Notes:** Yeah, I know. A week late. _WAY_ got an update last week, though, and I try to spread them out where possible. Next one soonish, but not specifically sure when. Pretty please love me and review? Peach.

_Welcome to the jungle,  
We got fun and games._  
**Welcome to the Jungle - Guns N' Roses**

**Chapter Five - Fun and Games  
**

Arthur dodged a Koopa shell, then whooped as it hit Merlin's unfortunate Luigi instead. Merlin grimaced, stuck out his tongue, and, God, it was just like being teenagers again, sitting on the floor with their backs against the sofa and legs sprawled out, bickering and throwing insults. The only thing missing was Hunith yelling for them to keep it down whenever they got too noisy and, much as Arthur loved Merlin's mum, he wasn't too bothered about her not being there.

.

.

.

"So you and Gwaine?" Arthur said, somewhere into their second hour of infantile regression.

Merlin didn't glance away from the screen, presumably thinking this was just another attempt to distract him on Arthur's part. It wasn't, although Arthur couldn't say why he was asking, or why the idea of Merlin and Gwaine being in a serious relationship was perturbing him so much. All he knew was that usually Merlin would have asked him to help clear out his mum's attic, even in the time between partners where Merlin and Gwaine were messing around together, and this time he asked Gwaine instead.

"What about me and Gwaine?" Merlin asked after a moment, when Arthur didn't continue – of course he didn't continue, because he wasn't going to tell Merlin that he felt offended at not being dragged in to help, and maybe just a little upset, too.

"Nothing, really," Arthur replied, because, what? Was he just supposed to ask if Merlin was only shagging Gwaine because neither of them was in a long-term thing, or if it was because they were starting a long-term thing with each other? "I was just wondering," he added. "Isn't it weird, though? You and he are friends."

"Hmm," Merlin said, stealing Arthur's mushroom on the game. "Not really, no. We've only been mates for a couple of years, not like us. And anyway, it's _Gwaine_." He glanced away from the TV screen for a second, grinning at Arthur. "Why all the questions, anyway? You jealous?"

"Well, he is gorgeous," Arthur answered, reaching across to scrub his hand over Merlin's hair, putting the uncomfortable twisting in his stomach down to nothing more than disloyalty to Val.

(Honestly, the number of things he could be in denial about at one time)

.

.

.

"What the hell, Arthur?"

Arthur looked up from his position astride Merlin's thighs, staring at his boyfriend. Val stood in the doorway to the living room, keys still in his hand, facial expression some impossible combination of wide-eyed staring and narrow-eyed glaring.

Arthur released his grip on Merlin's wrists and scrambled to his feet. "Merlin stole my controller," he said, and although it was the truth – wrestling matches were a common occurrence back when they played as kids, as well – it sounded like a lie. Worse, it sounded uncertain, like even Arthur wasn't sure it was true, and Val's frown showed that he didn't believe it in the slightest.

Merlin sat, then stood, and Arthur fought the urge to offer him a hand up. He took a decent sized step away from him instead, just for good measure, because there was no way touching Merlin was going to make Val look any happier.

"Merlin," Val said – growled, almost, voice low and a little menacing – without moving his eyes away from Arthur's. "You should probably be going home now, before Gwaine starts wondering where you are."

"No, it's fine," Merlin answered, so wonderfully, painfully oblivious of the tension filling the room. "He's out tonight, and then going back to his. Do you want to play Mario with us?"

Arthur winced, stepping in front of Merlin before Val could reply, trying to keep Val's ire directed at him. "Merlin, carry on playing, yeah? We'll be back in a bit." He walked from the room, praying that Val decided to follow him without saying anything else to Merlin.

Fortunately, he did, and Arthur heard the chirpy music start back up as Merlin unpaused the game, muffled slightly when Val closed the door behind them. "It really wasn't what it looked like," Arthur said immediately, before Val had the chance to open his mouth. "I promise, I was just trying to get my controller back." Val's expression was still so very doubtful, and Arthur rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Val, I've been friends with Merlin since we were children. If something was going to happen between us, it would have happened years ago, and not on the floor of my boyfriend's living room."

It wasn't the smartest line of argument to take, Arthur realised, but only once he was too far into the sentence to stop. He braced himself for Val's response, expecting angry words at the very least, but there was nothing. Just the silence, and Val's frown, and maybe that was worse.

"Look," he said, when it got too much to bear. "I love you. I wouldn't. Not with Merlin, not with anyone."

Valiant stared at him for a long, long moment, frosty and not necessarily believing. "Okay," he agreed eventually, and then smiled. Arthur tried to keep his sigh silent and his relief hidden. "I was thinking we'd get pizza tonight. Ask Merlin if he wants to join us."

.

.

.

Arthur spent the evening too busy being pleased about the fact that his boyfriend had apparently decided he didn't hate his best friend any more to realise just how suspicious Val's sudden change of heart was. He had two of the people he loved most in the world – not that he was going to admit that, ever, because Val wouldn't take well to it and the information would go straight to Merlin's head, making him giddy and unbearable for weeks, if not months – with him, getting along well, and for once Val wasn't sending him _hurry up and get rid of him_ looks.

No, Valiant was not just polite to Merlin but actually friendly as well. It was a pleasant change.

(If Arthur had any sense he'd have been worrying about his motives. Arthur had no sense whatsoever)

.

.

.

"I'm going to turn in," Val said, about half ten, a couple of hours after they'd switched from playing Mario to watching repeats of comedy news quizzes on _Dave_. He stood, stretched, and smiled down at Arthur. "Don't stay up too late, yeah?"

Arthur shook his head, glancing at Merlin, who also stood. "I should be heading home, really."

"Stay here," Val answered, still smiling, and Arthur marvelled again at his ability to make invitations sound a quite a lot like orders. "It's late. Arthur can make up the spare room for you."

Arthur nodded, looking at Merlin. "Stay," he agreed. "You might as well, seeing as Gwaine isn't around."

"Yeah," Merlin agreed, grinning at Arthur, then a little more cautiously at Val. "Thanks."

.

.

.

"...And you know where the bathroom is," Arthur finished, having listed just about every fact about the house he could imagine Merlin possibly needing to know.

"The one with a bath in it, right?" Merlin replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm not a child, Arthur. Go to bed."

"Sorry," he said, because yeah, it was easy when it didn't matter. "Goodnight, Merlin."

"Goodnight, Arthur. Sweet dreams."

"_Girl_."

.

.

.

Arthur wasn't expecting Val to be waiting up for him. He should have been, maybe, but he wasn't.

.

.

.

"Not tonight," he murmured as Val wrapped an arm around his waist and pressed a kiss to his neck. "Tomorrow."

"You said that yesterday," Val replied, no less softly, lips tracing a path along Arthur's shoulder blade as his hand edged lower, pulling gently at the hem of Arthur's shirt.

Arthur squirmed slightly, trying to pull back from the hand on his stomach – it didn't hurt anymore, thank God, but he was possibly a little bit ticklish and Val knew it – which served only to bring his back into full contact with Val's front. "I didn't know yesterday that you were going to invite Merlin to stay in the room next door to ours," he muttered, stilling Valiant's hand with his own.

"_Merlin_," Val sneered, just the tiniest edge of teeth to his kisses. "What, we can't fuck because your friend is in the house? I never knew you were such a prude, Arthur."

"What?" Arthur asked, then remembered to lower his voice again. He rolled over so that he was facing Val, the hand that had been on his stomach sliding across his lower ribs and then down his spine, resting heavily at the small of his back. "That's not what this is. I just don't..."

He stared into Val's eyes, then at the faint creases that marked his forehead and turned down his mouth into something hard and a little cold, unrelenting and unforgiving. "Don't what, Arthur? Are you ashamed of me?"

"No!" Arthur gasped, almost silent for all that it was emphatic. "No, of course not. Why would you think that?" He held Val's gaze, like that would somehow help him to see into his head, work out where his words were coming from. It didn't, of course, and the only thing Arthur could think of to do was push gently at his shoulder until Val rolled onto his back, pulling his own t-shirt off and reaching to turn out the light before climbing on top of him.

.

.

.

"I love you," Arthur groaned, voice hoarse, legs around Val's waist, one hand tangled in his hair, the other gripping the headboard behind his back. "I love you," he promised, Val's nails tracing lines along his spine, mouth pressed against his shoulder, not quite muffling his answering moans. "I love you."

(The worst part was that it was true. It would have been so much better if it wasn't)

.

.

.

Merlin blushed his way through breakfast, vanishing almost immediately afterwards with some bullshit excuse. Val smirked. Arthur was pretty sure he knew exactly how a lamppost felt when a dog pissed on it.

He was territory, pure and simple, and Val couldn't have made it a whole lot plainer if he'd hung a sign around Arthur's neck saying _hands off_. It hurt, more than the realisation that Val had played him like a piano in order to thoroughly stake his claim.

"What," he said, as soon as the front door closed behind Merlin, "the _fuck_ was that, Val?"

Val reached out to him, leaning across the table and tugging the collar of Arthur's shirt down a little to look at the fresh mark at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. "What the fuck do you think it was, Arthur?" he asked, sounding blasé, completely unbothered by Arthur's anger.

"You wanted him to hear us," Arthur accused, Val's lack of concern only making him more certain of this. "You planned it, as soon as you got back and found him here."

Val didn't even deny it, although Arthur hadn't really expected him to. Val wasn't always completely honest with him, obviously, but then Arthur wasn't entirely truthful himself sometimes, and neither of them bothered with outright lies, particularly not blatant ones. "So what if I did?" Val replied. "So your friend heard us have sex. It's not a big deal, Arthur. I'm fairly sure Merlin's slept with people, especially given all the things I've heard about Gwaine."

"Yeah, well, I'm fairly sure Gwaine doesn't make Merlin do anything with an audience."

"_Make_, Arthur?" Valiant repeated, and Arthur realised just how much of a mistake that sentence was. "Be very careful, love," he said, getting up from his seat at the breakfast table, voice low and dangerous. "Someone might take that as an accusation."

"I didn't mean that," Arthur said, rising as well, taking a step away from the table as Val circled around to stand next to him. "I didn't...that wasn't what I meant." And that was the second conversation like that in less than twelve hours, and Arthur wasn't at all happy with it. "Don't make this conversation into something that's my fault, Val, because it _isn't_." He didn't look away, even though in most conversations he probably would have done, because he wasn't going to let Val treat him like he was making accusations of rape in order to change the subject.

Val glared back at him, not backing down – he never did – but not moving any closer either. He nodded once, slowly, before speaking. "What was I supposed to do, Arthur? Do you really just expect me to put up with the way he looks at you?"

"Merlin doesn't look at me," Arthur denied, immediately and without thought. Merlin was his friend, nothing more, and Arthur was pretty damn sure Merlin didn't want to change that. And then he said what was probably the stupidest thing he'd ever said to Val, possibly to anyone, and really couldn't explain why he said it, or why it sounded so hopeful. "He doesn't, does he?"

.

.

.

Light travelled faster than sound.

Arthur didn't remember much from physics lessons at school, but he remembered that.

Apparently, as he learned today, pain didn't.


	7. When Drinking Was New

**Title:** Lonely Ghosts  
**Author: **EachPeachPearPlum  
**Rating: **T  
**Warnings:** Violence (following on from the previous chapter, this one is subtitled _until someone loses an eye_, although to my knowledge there aren't any suitable songs with that as a lyric), excessive(?) alcohol consumption, and probably language, although I'm not right certain about that now.  
**Disclaimer:** If only...  
**Notes:** Yeah. Last chapter I have complete. Which means that after this updates are likely to be kind of irregular, as is currently the case with everything else I'm writing. Next one is likely to be from Merlin's POV, because that, apparently, is what people want. All comments are welcome and sincerely appreciated. Later, Peach.

_Drinking back, drinking for two,_  
_Drinking with you_,  
_When drinking was new_  
_Sleeping in the back of my car_,  
_We never went far_.  
_Didn't need to go_ far.  
**Dakota - Stereophonics**

**Chapter Six - When Drinking Was New  
**

Arthur registered the sharp crack of Val backhanding him first, then the salty tang of blood in his mouth. He wasn't entirely sure how he went from standing on his feet to kneeling on the floor next to the table, but he did, and then the stinging in his cheek kicked in.

"Get up," Val snarled. "_Now_."

Arthur tried. One hand to his face, tongue poking at what felt like a massive flap of skin on the inside of his cheek, he tried. Not quick enough, apparently, because Val reached down, clamping a hand around his upper arm and hauling him to his feet. He placed his other hand on Arthur's jaw, turning his head so that Arthur found himself facing him, his grip too strong for him to turn away.

He leaned in, closer and closer, lips brushing Arthur's ear as he spoke. "If I ever find him in my house again, you will learn what _make_ feels like, Arthur. Do you understand me?"

_Yes_, Arthur thought. _No, not in the slightest_. He blinked, trying to unscramble the mess of thoughts in his head, Val's words barely making it through the buzzing in his ears.

"I asked you a question, love," Val hissed, the word a curse rather than an endearment, pulling back to hold Arthur's eyes again. "Do you understand?"

Arthur nodded, once, because the words made perfect sense, and he comprehended the threat completely. He didn't understand why Val was making it – the circumstances that led to it were plain, but the act of threatening him wasn't, at all – but he understood _it_, and that was what Val wanted the answer to. That was what he wanted the answer to, the answer he wanted was _yes_, and Arthur didn't contemplate for a moment not giving him it.

"Good," Val said, all traces of rage draining from his voice and posture as he let go of Arthur. "I'm going out. I'll see you later."

Arthur managed not to slump to the floor until after Val slammed the door behind him. He counted that as a victory.

.

.

.

He wasn't proud of the fact that he knew places that served alcohol before ten in the morning. He wasn't entirely clear on the law, but he was fairly sure that was against it, and absolutely certain that if his father ever learnt that he was drinking before noon he'd be disowned at the very least.

But he couldn't stay in the house. He couldn't just sit there, waiting for Val to return to _his_ house. He needed to be elsewhere, and preferably a long, long way away from sobriety. Alcohol would blur his mind just a little, numb the stinging of his cheek and take the edge off his fear, make it so that he could look at the last twenty four hours rationally, unemotionally.

(Drinking was a mistake. Drinking let him pretend, and made him just that much more amenable to his own lies)

.

.

.

"You wouldn't happen to have any ice, would you?" he asked, after draining his first glass of truly awful Scotch. The bloke behind the bar looked at him, at his empty glass on the bar, then grabbed a hideously unclean cloth from under the counter and tipped a scoopful of ice onto it before sliding it across the counter to Arthur, all without a word.

"Thanks," Arthur grunted, folding the cloth around the ice and pressing it to his cheek with a sigh. He slid the glass back over to the barman. "Another, please."

.

.

.

It was a plan of sorts, getting drunk enough to forget his own name, and it worked well, at least for a little while. Actually, it worked very well, for quite a number of hours, but for the fact that people seemed to decide he'd drunk enough after a couple of hours and refused to serve him.

He spent the majority of the day moving from one dive to another, each more disreputable than the previous one. And, given that he started out at somewhere serving drinks before ten, by the time it hit eleven in the evening – yes, he had something vaguely like lunch in the meantime, even if it was only a couple of bags of crisps and a packet of peanuts – he was in _hell_.

Or, rather, he was being thrown out of hell, with nowhere else to go but home – Lance's couch wasn't an option today, not with Gwen pretty much living with him, and Valiant hadn't been serious anyway. He'd just been angry and jealous over the compromising-looking position he'd found Arthur and Merlin in yesterday evening, and upset by Arthur's poor choice of words that morning. Arthur could see that now, could picture Val's face wearing something other than the rage that had been on it earlier, and he wasn't going to let some stupid argument over Merlin and an entirely unmeant threat end one of the longest relationships he'd had in years – and no means of actually getting there.

.

.

.

"Look," Arthur said – slurred, if he was honest – into his phone, huddling under the overhanging roof of the place he'd just been booted out of in an attempt not to get rained on. "I know you don't like me, but I need a ride and I don't have anyone else to call."

There was a long moment of silence – not really, because Arthur could hear faint voices in the background, probably from the TV – before he got an answer, and even then it came slowly, almost warily. "Arthur?"

"Yes," Arthur replied, then waited for a second silence to end.

"Are you _drunk_?" Gwaine asked eventually.

Arthur thought his tone was more than a little hypocritical, given that it was _Gwaine_ he was talking to. He was asking for help, though, and couldn't exactly say that if he actually wanted to get it. "A little bit. A lot, actually. I don't have anyone else to call," he repeated, like that would somehow be the fact that persuaded Gwaine.

He could practically feel Gwaine's desire to roll his eyes and produce a list of people who didn't find Arthur quite as objectionable as he did, a list of people anyone sensible would expect Arthur to go to for help before turning to Gwaine: Merlin, Lance, Morgana, Val, Gwen, Leon. Hell, even Uther would probably be up there, if Arthur wasn't unpleasantly drunk.

"Please," he added, sounding indescribably pathetic, then said it again just for good measure, and God forbid his father ever heard him begging like this. "_Please_."

Gwaine sighed, long and drawn out, and Arthur figured he was going to get a _no_ and have to call Lance and hear another lecture about how going home wasn't a good idea. Or he might not, actually. Lance might just skip the lecture and refuse to take him anywhere, which would leave Arthur stuck trying to get a taxi that would come out to the bad end of town in the middle of the night and it wasn't that he couldn't take care of himself because he could – Arthur was in excellent shape, thank you very much, and was more than capable of handling himself in an actual fight. At least, he could most of the time, when he wasn't drunk enough to call Gwaine thinking he might actually grant a request for assistance. But he needed to get home. Val had overreacted, but Arthur's actions had been inappropriate and foolish, rolling around on the floor with another man, and his words had been even more so. Arthur would go home, and he and Val would talk things out, and everything would be fine.

"Right then," Gwaine said, just when Arthur was about to mutter _forget it_, hang up, and start walking until he found somewhere a taxi might actually be willing to drive to. "Where am I getting you from, princess?"

.

.

.

"I swear," Arthur managed, forehead pressed against the cool glass of the passenger side window of Gwaine's car, eyes shut tight to keep out the unpleasant glare of the streetlights they were passing under. "Tell Merlin and I'll..."

"Yeah, I reckon the only thing you can threaten me with right now is vomiting in my car, and trust me, worse things have happened in here."

.

.

.

Gwaine pulled up neatly outside Val's house, ignition and headlights still on, waiting for Arthur to get out of the car. Arthur squinted drunkenly up the drive to the house, at the lights on in the downstairs hallway and in his and Val's bedroom, and tried to work out why his legs were so resistant to the idea of movement.

"Look, Arthur," Gwaine said after they'd been stationary for almost two minutes, sounding about as surprised at his use of Arthur's actual name as Arthur felt. "I'm not going to ask why you were drinking in a dive like that on your own, or why you thought I was the only person you could call for help, mostly 'cause I figure you won't tell me. Just...it doesn't seem like you actually want to get out of the car, so I can take you to Merlin's instead, if you want, or Lance's, or – God, I can't really believe I'm offering this – you can sleep on my floor or something. You don't have to stop here if you don't want to."

"Thanks," Arthur replied, unexpectedly grateful. "It's fine, though. If I hadn't wanted to be here, I'd just have gone straight to Lance." That would have been a far easier option, maybe, but nothing worth having was easy – ugh, what a cliché, and Arthur hated that he even thought it, no matter how true it was – and Arthur wanted his relationship with Val to be worth having.

He opened his door, wincing as the light in the middle of the car came on, then turned so that he was facing Gwaine. "I owe you for the lift," he said, despite the echoes of the last _I'll owe you one_ he promised and the accidental hurt it caused him making him shudder, because he always paid his debts.

"No," Gwaine answered slowly, frowning, his eyes fixed not on Arthur's but on his cheek. "No, I don't think you do. Arthur, do-"

"Don't, Gwaine. Just don't."

.

.

.

Arthur heard Val's footsteps on the stairs before he even had his key in the lock. He pushed open the door, taking the time to close and lock it behind him, then take off his shoes and coat before looking up at Val, hovering on the bottom step.

"You came back," he said, looking and sounding so oddly uncertain. "I wasn't sure that you would."

Some tiny part of Arthur – one not quite smothered with alcohol – wondered if it was an act. The drunk part was larger, stronger, choking down its weaker, smarter counterpart, leaving Arthur with a comforting surety that Val regretted their argument. "Of course I came back," Arthur told him. "I love you. Some stupid fight isn't going to change that."

"I shouldn't have hit you," Val said, approaching him slowly. "It won't happen again, I promise." He stopped, not quite within arm's reach, leaving it up to Arthur to decide whether or not to close the distance between them.

Arthur appreciated that, interpreting it as Val wanting any contact between them to be Arthur's choice.

He chose, stepping forward and pressing a kiss to Val's cheek before wrapping his arms around him. "I know," he murmured, feeling Val relax slightly into the hug. "I forgive you. I'm sorry."

(Looking back, his imagination painted the smile on Val's face as a smirk, cruel and cold, victorious. The fact that it was only his imagination, that even Merlin said it was only his imagination, still didn't make him feel any better)


	8. All the Pretty Girls

**Title: **Lonely Ghosts  
**Rating: **T, this one. Almost child-friendly, but for the language and a few other things, none of which are as major as in earlier chapters.  
**Disclaimer: **Canon, schmanon. If it were mine, things would be different. Also, I'm not _fun._, however much I may adore their work.  
**Notes:** Been a while, I know. Four people can be blamed for the delay:  
1. Myself (life aughtn't to be such a distraction, but I keep letting it take precedence),  
2. Gwaine (who came barging in, taking over the story, and I've given up trying to stop him by now),  
3/4. _Daroh_ and _Sharmini_, who requested a chapter from Merlin's point of view. Turns out it's trickier than I thought it'd be, what with the whole Gwaine issue, so this is technically part one of that chapter, the Gwaine part, and in letting him run riot over my writing I have hopefully wrestled back enough control over things that part two a) won't take anywhere near as long and b) will actually focus on Merlin and Arthur.  
As ever, I adore you all. Until next time, Peach.

_Oh, come on, oh, come on,  
What's a boy to do  
When all the pretty girls can't measure to_ you?  
**All The Pretty Girls - fun.**

**Merlin's Chapter - Part One  
**

Sunday. Sunday was a good day. Merlin liked Sundays.

Sundays meant lazy morning sex and a cooked breakfast. Sundays meant roast dinners and a walk in the afternoon. Sundays meant collapsing as a couple in a tired tangle of limbs, watching rubbish TV and celebrating the last evening of freedom before having to return to work.

Of course, right now, Sundays for Merlin meant Gwaine, and were distinctly different.

The morning sex was still there, but considerably less lazy, unless Gwaine had dragged him out the evening before and they were hungover. The breakfasts were still there, hungover or not, inevitably eaten in bed, and Gwaine had some mystical ability to chuck anything in a frying pan and make it into a somewhat spectacular breakfast, although he failed consistently at any other meal he tried to make. The roast dinners...Merlin tended not to have the energy to make one, Gwaine was happy with chips or pizza from the freezer, and walks were definitely out.

In fact, the only part of a Sunday with Gwaine that was the same as all Merlin's Sundays with all his past relationships was the snuggling on the sofa, mostly because by early evening they'd finally managed to drag themselves out of bed and into actual clothing, feet in each other's laps, tired but happy.

Being with Gwaine was comfortable and, most of the time, it was easy. Gwaine didn't do serious, except for when he really couldn't help it, and this wasn't one of those times. And yeah, maybe Merlin didn't love him as anything more than a friend, but it wasn't like they didn't both know that, and it wasn't like Gwaine was in love with him either. They were just them, Gwaine and Merlin, friends who had slightly more sex than most friends did.

Particularly on Sundays.

.

.

.

"What're you doing on Thursday?" Merlin asked, hitting the mute button on the TV remote just before the _Go Compare_ man could burst into (hideous, hideous) song.

"From the tone you're asking in, I'm guessing there's a right answer to that question," Gwaine said, grinning. "So, lover, what are we doing on Thursday?"

"I promised Mum ages ago that I'd help her clear out the attic. She's decided that's the day to do it, told me to bring some of my 'strapping young friends' with me. And," he added, half afterthought, half to dissuade Gwaine from objecting, "I know I've asked you not to call me that."

"What would you prefer, then?" Gwaine asked, predictable as ever. "Pumpkin? Honey? My dear sweet Merlikins?"

Merlin winced. "I'd certainly advise against the latter if you _ever_ wish to sleep with me again." And oh, God, certainly not in front of Arthur, who would run with it and run far, and Merlin would be lucky if he was ever called anything else. Not that he'd seen Arthur all that much lately, but some things needed to be quashed as soon as possible.

"Pumpkin it is, then," Gwaine muttered, bumping Merlin with his shoulder, then returning to their plans for later in the week, although, thankfully, not with an objection. "Who else is helping?"

"Er...you. Lance and Gwen are being all couple-y, Elyan and Percival both have work, Leon is...I don't know, actually, he just said he couldn't. And Arthur..." Merlin trailed off, but then he didn't really need to finish the sentence anyway.

"...Arthur would bring Valiant, and you don't like him," Gwaine concluded, with a smirk that Merlin considered grossly unfair.

"He doesn't like me, more like," he grumbled, pulling his feet up onto the sofa between he and Gwaine.

"Come on, Merlin, don't be like that," Gwaine wheedled, smirk becoming a puppy-dog eyed pout (and why the hell did that always work? Merlin knew exactly what Gwaine was like, and yet all he had to do was pull his ridiculous pity-me expression to get away with shit). He leant over, bracing himself with one hand on the back of the sofa and resting the other on Merlin's shoulder. "Val's just jealous because Arthur likes you better than him."

"Don't even joke about that," Merlin muttered, and no, there wasn't a stinging something in his chest that made him wish it was true. Or there was, because Merlin was adult enough to admit these things to himself, but it wasn't anything new. It had just maybe gotten a little stronger since Arthur had moved in with Valiant.

Gwaine nodded, slowly, and for all that he could be a borderline jerk sometimes, he usually knew when to leave things alone. "Sorry," he conceded, pressing a tiny kiss to the corner of Merlin's mouth before retreating to his side of the sofa again. "So, what time is your mum expecting us?" he asked, resting a hand on Merlin's shin and stroking gently with a thumb. "And," he added, when the thought clearly occurred to him, "is she gonna cook?"

"Don't worry," Merlin promised, squeezing Gwaine's hand with his own. "I told her you'd treat us to dinner some place nice."

"Anywhere you want," Gwaine laughed, and given how fond Merlin was of him most of the time, he didn't complain when he heard him mutter, "nothing could be worse than your mum's food."

.

.

.

Inviting Gwaine was a mistake, Merlin realised. Sure, Hunith loved him to bits, enough for her to ignore the fact that he and Merlin weren't ever going to be anything more than friends, but it didn't change the fact that Gwaine was a _pest_, a total drama queen, and utterly bollocks at helping.

"What's this?" Gwaine asked, for what was quite possibly the fiftieth time that evening. He pushed some hideously dusty thing into Merlin's hands, and really, this whole thing had Merlin wanting to either bleach himself clean or drink himself silly, possibly both.

"It's a photo album, Gwaine. I'm sure you've come across one before."

"Yes, but-"

"Oh, for the love of God, would you just stop? For two hours, could you please just not be yourself?" Gwaine grinned, gorgeous and smug, cause of at least fifty percent of Merlin's headaches, and reasoning with him so wasn't going to work, never did. Merlin cast a glance around, making sure Hunith wasn't within hearing range (he was pretty sure she was still making another pot of tea in the kitchen, but he wasn't going to risk her overhearing this), then went with his tried and tested method of getting Gwaine to do what he wanted, and it wasn't like it wasn't something Merlin enjoyed anyway. "Look, make yourself useful and I'll blow you in the bathroom of whatever restaurant we eat at, okay?"

Gwaine laughed, raucous and joyful, pressing a quick, wet, scratchy kiss to Merlin's cheek before grabbing his arse then waltzing out of range of Merlin's retaliatory swat. "Sure thing, pumpkin. What do you want me to do?"

.

.

.

Not that that was enough to quell Gwaine completely – nothing ever was – but it took the edge off, dealt with enough of Gwaine's quirks, charming and not quite so charming, that they managed to get some work done.

The box came as a surprise when Gwaine dug it up, yet another thing they'd come across in the attic that day that Merlin didn't realise his mother had hung on to. Unlike everything else, though, this was a reminder of his childhood that Merlin was happy to relocate; all the rest was just mess, but this was special. This did not need Gwaine pissing around with it.

"That's mine," Merlin snapped, slapping the flaps of the cardboard box back down. "Don't...just don't."

"Right," Gwaine muttered, eyebrow raised, surprise on his face. He passed Merlin the box, nodding, then grinned. "Sorry, mate. Reckon it's time for a break, yeah?"

"No, I'm sorry," Merlin answered, because, sure, Gwaine was an irritating git, but he was there, _helping_, purely because Merlin asked him to. He didn't deserve to be grumped at. "A break sounds good. Clean up, and I'll tell Mum we're ready to go out for dinner." And, just to show how repentant he was, a kiss, fingers tangled in Gwaine's hair, bodies pressed close together. "Don't worry," he added, the words pressed into the space between them. "I haven't forgotten my promise."

Not, of course, that Gwaine would have held him to it if he had, but then that was sort of why Merlin wanted to keep it.

.

.

.

Being with Gwaine was comfortable and, most of the time, it was easy.

It wasn't perfect, not by a long way, but then Merlin had learnt from his parents' example that hoping for perfection wasn't worth the disappointment of not getting it.

Gwaine didn't do serious, and he didn't do sensible. He wasn't an idiot but he was good at pretending to be, wasn't an irresponsible lout but liked to play the part, wasn't going to disappoint Merlin but made the effort to warn him just in case. He wasn't a saint, but he wasn't the devil either.

He wasn't perfect, but then Merlin wasn't either, and if he ever ended up with someone who was his own inadequacies would probably kill him.

"He's a good man," Hunith said, watching from the window as Gwaine loaded yet another box of tat into the back of the car to take to the tip on his way to work in the morning.

"I know, Mum," Merlin answered, dumping their mugs (_come in for a cup of tea before you leave, won't you, boys? _she'd asked when they got back from the restaurant, and Gwaine had agreed without a second thought) in the sink before joining her. "He adores you too, you know. Not so much your cooking, but you can't have everything."

"Oi, cheeky. You grew up on my cooking and it didn't do you any harm."

Merlin resisted the urge to scoff at her, if only because she was his mum and she probably didn't deserve it. "Love you, Mum."

"I know, Merlin," she mimicked, jostling him with an elbow. "Now, get on with you. You might be a scrawny thing, but there's no reason you can't help him out."

It wasn't perfect, Merlin thought, as Gwaine knocked the black bin bag of junk he was carrying from his hands in order to push a kiss on him. It wasn't, not by a long way, but he could live with that, for as long as Gwaine was willing to put up with him.

It wasn't like he had any better offers, after all, and love wasn't all that far from _in love_.

Of course, it was far enough that Merlin didn't really object when Gwaine dropped him off at his door and asked if he minded if he went out the following night; Merlin didn't, never did, but Gwaine always asked anyway. He minded even less than usual tonight, though, since he remembered Arthur bitching more than once in the early days of his relationship that Val was rarely around on a Friday evening; Gwaine being out gave him opportunity to drop in on Arthur, and the dusty, musty box sitting carefully in his arms meant he had an excuse to do so.

He tried to ignore the fact that, up until recently, he never would have needed one.


	9. Blacking Out the Friction

**Rating/warnings: **M, because my ability to write anything even remotely child-friendly seems to have vanished beyond all hope of recovery. Warnings as for all other chapters, except the bad language seems even more prolific than usual.  
**Notes: **So, here we are again. Part two of Merlin's chapter, which has now spawned a third part (for which I blame Will. How is it that characters I don't even like all that much have the ability to ruin all my stories?). Hopefully shouldn't be all that long until that one is up as well, and then the chapter that follows it is written already. And my laptop appears to be incapable of playing anything other than _Death Cab for Cutie_, which is just a little confusing, but has allowed me to find a title to this one that makes a little more sense (in my mind, anyway) than _You Can't Always Get What You Want_.  
So yeah. Here's hoping you enjoy. Peach.

_I don't mind restrictions  
Or if you're blacking out the friction  
It's just an escape  
(It's overrated, anyway)_

The hardest part is yet to come  
When you will cross the country alone.  
**Blacking Out the Friction - Death Cab for Cutie**

**Merlin's Chapter - Part Two**

Truth was, Merlin had missed Arthur. They'd been distant of late, ever since Arthur had taken it upon himself to avoid him for a few days. It was only to be expected, because while Merlin had a tendency to occasionally fudge the truth with Arthur, Arthur never lied to him in return, and he had then. He'd lied, and got other people to lie for him, and Merlin wasn't sure what to do about that. Distance was always going to follow. But still, he'd missed him.

It was all bloody Valiant's fault, the fucker. Merlin didn't know how, or why, but he was sure of that.

Still, Valiant wasn't going to be around tonight, when Merlin took himself over to Arthur's. Even if they weren't going to talk properly about things that mattered, like Arthur's distance and the argument with Lancelot and the way Morgana frowned each time Arthur was mentioned within her hearing, they'd still hang out, have fun. Just him and Arthur, like old times.

X

He didn't go as far as to let himself into Arthur's house, like he'd sometimes done in the past. That wasn't on anymore, not now that Arthur was living with someone else full time, not when Merlin was only ninety eight percent certain that Valiant wasn't going to be there. No, this time Merlin knocked first, juggling the box in his arms as he did so, and waited for Arthur to open the door before walking in.

The look on his face was pretty close to priceless, too. _That oh, Merlin, what have you done now?_ face that had, over the years they'd known each other, become something no less entertaining for all that it was familiar to Merlin. The joy was something worth seeing as well, because however hard he tried to hide, Merlin knew it was there, knew it the way he knew all of Arthur's moods, whether or not he wanted Merlin to see them. And yeah, Gwaine would make jokes, poke fun at Merlin's "undying adoration" (his words, obviously, because Gwaine was kind of the only person who talked about it, even if Merlin thought a few of their friends weren't quite as oblivious as he wanted them to be), but that was kind of what Merlin was used to, and all the teasing in the world wasn't going to change the fact that Merlin _knew_ Arthur.

He _knew_ that something was wrong.

Okay, he maybe didn't _know_ it. And maybe Gwaine was right, maybe it was just because he didn't like Valiant. Maybe it was because Merlin was just the tiniest, littlest (gaping, massive, incomparably ginormous) bit jealous. Maybe everything was fine, and Merlin just wanted there to be something wrong.

X

Things seemed to be going so well, for a while. Arthur was...okay, he was Arthur, arrogance (faked, half the time, but Merlin had never seen any real reason to let Arthur know he could tell the difference) and humour and so much himself that at any given minute it was a toss up as to whether Merlin would rather kiss him or throttle him. Business as usual, and Merlin had given up hoping for their relationship to become less thunderous years ago, had stopped _wanting_ it to not long after that.

"Cheating little shit," Arthur hissed, planting his elbow in Merlin's ribs. Which, yeah, wasn't exactly civil, but it definitely wasn't anything out of the ordinary for the pair of them, particularly not when games were involved. Arthur had been fiercely competitive for as long as Merlin had known him, a fact that he'd always delighted in taking advantage of. "That was your fault."

Merlin pulled his best _what, me?_ face. "Don't know what you're talking about," he lied, absolutely and blatantly, but that was half the fun of it, wasn't it?

X

"So you and Gwaine?" Arthur asked, completely out of the blue, or so it seemed to Merlin. They hadn't even been talking about anything close to that, or anything at all, really; in fact, Merlin had just been thinking about offering his excuses and making a run for it before Valiant got home.

"What about me and Gwaine?" Merlin answered reluctantly, because, much as he loved Arthur, he wasn't exactly happy talking about his love life with him. Sure, had Arthur been as integral a part of that love life as Merlin might have liked him to be, discussing it would have been a different matter; as things stood, they tended to keep their distance from each others' relationships, at least until after they ended.

"Nothing," Arthur answered. A shrug was all that was going to get, Merlin figured, because God forbid Arthur ever actually follow through with a point he was making. Except, of course, he did, and clearly, Arthur was particularly...well, Merlin didn't want to say bothered, because he probably wasn't, but interested, maybe. "I was just wondering," Arthur said eventually, somewhat startling Merlin with his decision to continue. "Isn't it weird? You and he are friends."

Well, obviously, Merlin thought. It would seem weird to Arthur, and yeah, Merlin got that. It _was_ weird, his thing for Arthur, given how close the two of them had been for so many years, practically raised together. For Arthur's eighth birthday, Merlin gave him a toy sword that he'd saved up his pocket money for months for, then gave him Hunith the day after, didn't comment when Arthur smiled brighter for that than he did the whole of his birthday (the next time they fought, less than two hours later, Arthur tried to give Merlin Morgana. Mostly, Merlin was just happy that they never argued badly enough that Arthur tried to give him Uther). They were too close to change who they were to each other, or so Arthur presumably thought, and since he was living with another man Merlin wasn't exactly going to point out that his feelings had been what they were for a hell of a long time, no changing necessary.

"No, not really," Merlin answered, after so long a silence that it was possibly odd to do so. And, because he knew what Arthur was thinking, he might as well explain it in a way Arthur could understand. "We've only been friends for a few years, not like us. And, anyway, it's _Gwaine_," because anything Arthur hadn't got could be explained in those four words. It was still too tense, though, and Merlin still didn't know why Arthur was asking, but that was enough of serious for now. "Why all the questions, anyway? You jealous?"

"Well, he is gorgeous," Arthur said, grinning, then decided to compound the squirming in Merlin's gut by mauling his hair with what was probably meant to be affection.

"_You have no idea_," Merlin muttered, shoving him away and forcing his attention back to the game.

Staying another half hour wouldn't hurt.

X

Staying another half hour didn't hurt.

It was the hour after that that gave Valiant time to get home.

Even then, it didn't hurt him.

Much.

X

Merlin didn't know what it was, but it was something. Sure, coming home to find your boyfriend lying on top of another man wasn't exactly something anyone wanted, but the way Arthur reacted to Valiant's displeasure was Odd.

He didn't get angry, not even in his scary-quiet _I'm going to pretend I'm not angry_ way (it was rare, that, and half the time was followed by mildly violent explosions, but still. Arthur's anger wasn't always volatile). He didn't stick up for himself, argue that nothing wrong was happening; denied it, yes, but shakily, without conviction, without the certainty that said the mere suggestion was laughable.

Something was odd. The only person Merlin had ever known to cow Arthur like that was Uther, and even then Arthur's lack of argument was sulky, a refusal all in itself. Arthur was never like this.

And then Valiant, the bastard, tried to get Merlin out of the house, and no fucking way was that happening. Pity the prick never bothered to learn anything more about Arthur's friends than their names, because he might have known that Merlin and Gwaine didn't actually live together, and that making mention of Merlin's not-quite-boyfriend wasn't going to be enough to get rid of him.

Really, Merlin only had one option.

He looked up at them, grinned his best _don't mind Merlin, he's not quite all there_ grin (and the next time Gwaine said that to someone, Merlin was going to follow through on his threat to stop putting out, he really was), and invited Valiant to join them. Because, sure, he'd rather push him down the stairs than let him touch his things (which didn't include Arthur, however much Merlin might have wanted to), but Merlin was smart enough to know that murdering a man in his own home wasn't a good idea, particularly in front of a witness who was (inexplicably, in Merlin's book) fond of him.

No, he was grown up enough to hide the fact that he disliked Valiant more than should be humanly possible, even if he couldn't quite pretend to like him, and he was also grown up enough not to eavesdrop when Arthur took his _boyfriend_ out of the room to explain everything, no matter how much he might have wanted to.

Arthur coming back into the room and suggesting he stayed for a while wasn't what he was expecting, though. Defensive anger on Arthur's part, yes. A _time you left, Merlin, and I'll see you sometime next week_, yes. But, "Shove over, Merlin, it has to be my go by now"?

Maybe there wasn't anything funky going on with Arthur after all.

X

That said, the atmosphere Merlin was used to was gone. No snide remarks, sarcastic comments, playful violence, contact of any kind. They just sat, the three of them, Merlin and Arthur and Valiant, passing the controllers methodically between them, like it was ritual but not the good kind.

Sure, it was civil, which was better than it could be – and, for that matter, better than a fair few of Merlin's past interactions with Valiant had been – but it wasn't exactly what Merlin would call fun.

X

"Well," Valiant said, half an hour or so after he and Arthur returned to the room. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a break."

He stood, dropping the controller to the floor with far less care than he should have for it (perhaps it wasn't fair of Merlin to expect him to know how much this ancient bit of plastic meant to him, but he did, and something that old deserved to be treated with respect, regardless of its sentimental value) then made for the kitchen, returning seconds later with the menu from a pizza place in his hand. "What do you want?"

"Um," Merlin cut in before Arthur could answer, and perhaps the whole reason Valiant had been able to manage civility had been by pretending Merlin wasn't there, pretending so thoroughly that he actually started to believe it. "Yeah, I should probably be heading off now, anyway. It's late, and even if Gwaine isn't about I still have a home to go to."

Merlin watched as Arthur glanced at Valiant, who stared right back at him, a smile that Merlin couldn't interpret but didn't like on his face. "Idiot," Arthur said calmly. "He'll have pepperoni, Val. Always does."

_Val _(yeah, because Valiant wasn't a bad enough name already. He had to go shorten it down to something stupid and girly and no, Merlin was not letting his jealousy run away with him) smiled wider, then took the menu away. Merlin heard the phone beep as he dialled, then footsteps and his voice retreating down the hall.

Arthur elbowed Merlin, then knelt up and shuffled towards the TV, unplugging and packing up Merlin's SNES before turning the TV to actual channels. "Stick around," he said, settling on the sofa. "I've told you before, Merlin, Val doesn't hate you."

Merlin huffed, disagreeing entirely, but slumped on the armchair in Arthur's living room anyway.

Looked like he was staying for dinner, then.

X

Still, Merlin wasn't quite sure how he managed to go from agreeing to eat pizza to lying in Arthur's spare bed. The leap of logic that led from one to the other quite escaped him, but there he was anyway, burying himself under his borrowed quilt in his borrowed pyjamas on his borrowed bed, trying not to hear the sounds of Arthur getting ready to crawl into his own bed with his boyfriend just the other side of a thin wall.

A _very_ thin wall, actually.

He tried not to listen to the words just audible over the creaking of mattress springs and the rustle of bedding as Arthur settled himself, as he and Valiant curled around each other to sleep, but that didn't mean that Merlin didn't know they were there, didn't know the sort of conversations that took place at times like that, quiet and honest in the night.

There was nothing quite like darkness for telling truths, something about the absence of sight making it easier for the words to break free, things that seemed so secret in daylight let loose by the shadows.

"Not tonight," Merlin heard Arthur say quietly, and couldn't call forth an emotion beyond relief, so strong that he missed the next few sentences exchanged between them, and thank God for that. He knew logically that Arthur was sleeping with Valiant, in more ways than just the most literal. They were adults, living in the same house, sharing the same bed, and Merlin wasn't stupid enough to believe there was anything chaste about it. He didn't want to hear the evidence, though; it was hard enough to know that it happened without knowing the details of _how_.

In the haze of his relief at not having to hear his best-friend-slash-wish-he-was-more in any kind of sexual situation, Merlin missed the discussion that turned _no _into _yes_. He heard his name, certainly, the way that anyone could hear their name, regardless of whether or not they'd been listening to the conversation that preceded it, and that was enough to snap his attention back to what was going on next door, even if he really didn't want to know.

He heard his name, then more muttering, heard Arthur utter a sharp, loud, "What?" and forced his ears into ignorance again.

Merlin didn't know how _no_ became _yes_, because he didn't want to.

Things fell silent again, and Merlin breathed a second sigh of relief, rolling onto his stomach and pressing the side of his face into the pillow. The creaking of his mattress quieted slowly, and Merlin winced, embarrassed, sure that Arthur would have heard it, Arthur and Valiant, and they would know he was still awake, could hear every word that passed between them if he so chose.

His worries turned out to be unnecessary. Over the creaking of their own mattress, Merlin highly doubted they could hear anything.

X

He never imagined Arthur to be particularly vocal in bed. Not that he thought about it often, not that often, but he was human, and he might have been able to keep his conscious thoughts from revolving entirely around Arthur but he wasn't a saint, and there were some thoughts he just wasn't in control of.

Merlin never imagined Arthur to be loud. He never thought Arthur would moan like that, filthy and desperate. He never thought Arthur would beg as he did, chant like that, declare his love so frequently and so freaking _loudly_. He never thought Arthur's breaths would turn into gasps, sharp and not-quite-pained, the gasps of someone being fucked so hard that the bed thudded against the wall with every thrust. He never thought Arthur would submit so thoroughly to someone, consent so readily and with so much volume.

And, even when he let his imagination run away with him, let himself pretend that he might possibly one day get to hear Arthur trying desperately to catch his breath after sex only a few inches from his ear, he never thought for a second that those inches would be filled by an entirely unsoundproof wall.

He never thought he'd feel quite so sick afterwards, either.


	10. Half-Empty or Half-Full

**Warnings: **Mention of past character death, little bit of language, generally menacing behaviour, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.  
**Notes: **As ever, my gratitude goes out to everyone reading and reviewing. Expect replies soon, and just know that you make my whole world brighter. It's back to Arthur again in the next chapter, which shouldn't take too long to be posted, all being well. Until then, Peach.

_Sorrow drips into your heart  
Through a pinhole,  
Just like a faucet that leaks and  
There is comfort in the sound__.  
But while you debate  
Half-empty or half-full,  
It slowly rises;  
Your love is gonna drown._  
**Death Cab for Cutie - Marching Bands of Manhattan**

**Merlin's Chapter - Part Three**

Merlin didn't see the point in showering when he got up in the morning. He didn't have anything fresh to change into, and he wasn't going to feel any cleaner.

He waited until he heard movement from next door before getting up, because walking around a house that wasn't his own when the owners were still asleep just felt wrong. It wasn't so bad with family, and it was never an issue on the odd night he kipped at Gwaine's. It had never been a problem at Arthur's before, either.

"Morning, Merlin," Valiant said, a painfully smug grin on his face. "Sleep well?"

Merlin looked around for Arthur, then heard the sound of a shower starting up; _bugger_, he was on his own with the git. "Fine, thanks," he lied, dragging out his idiot grin again. "And you?"

He didn't wait for a response, instead heading for the bread bin on the worktop, a remnant from when Arthur lived on his own and no one made Merlin feel unwelcome, no one made him realise just how much Arthur wasn't _his_. He cut two slices of bread, wonky and uneven, getting thinner towards the bottom as bread always did when he cut it, then began opening cupboards, trying to ignore the way Valiant's stare was boring holes in his back.

"Like a log," Valiant said eventually, and it took Merlin a moment to realise that he was answering his question. Merlin suspected the smug bastard probably wasn't lying, either. "Jam's in the fridge," he added, when Merlin was halfway through his search. "And there's peanut butter in...yeah, that one."

"Marmite?" He asked, because Arthur had had a jar of it hidden away for as long as Merlin could remember; he pretended he liked it, rather than let Merlin know it was just for him.

"It got lost in the move," Valiant said, and that, _that_ was a lie. Merlin couldn't have said how he knew, but he did, and it didn't hurt. He knew how much Valiant disliked him, knew he wouldn't want to keep around anything that made Merlin think he was accepted in his house. That didn't bother him.

What bothered him was that Arthur didn't replace it. What bothered him was _why_.

He left the bread on the sideboard, not giving a damn about the crumbs that would end up everywhere, crumbs Arthur would be pissed about when he found them. The jar of peanut butter went next to them, landing just a fraction too hard, and Merlin turned around to look at Valiant. "What _is_ your problem?"

He didn't actually expect to get an answer; Valiant was a dick, sure, but Merlin still thought he'd deny having anything against him.

"You are, _Mer_lin," he said, in a distinctly uncanny impersonation of the way Arthur tended to say his name, then stepping right up close, resting his hands on the worktop on either side of Merlin's body and leaning in. And then in some more.

And then a bit further, just for good measure.

"You are my fucking problem, Merlin," he repeated, voice low, but then there was no reason for it not to be, given that he was close enough that a deep breath would mean they were pretty much kissing. "I don't want you here."

Merlin's instinctive reaction to being pushed was always to push back. It wasn't smart, he knew – hell, Arthur had warned him about it, even Gwaine had warned him, and when Gwaine said something wasn't clever then it really was dumb as fuck – but it was irrepressible, however much Merlin sometimes wanted to control it. And, right now, controlling that impulse would definitely be a good idea. Right now, Merlin wished he wasn't so bloody immature. "Yeah, well, you probably shouldn't have blocked me against the counter, then."

"Here in my house, fuckwit," Valiant snarled, and Merlin really hadn't thought it was possible for him to get any closer, but apparently it was. "I don't want you here, and nor does Arthur, so fuck off."

Laughing was probably about as good an idea as smart-alecking, but that was what happened. Course, he stopped pretty quickly when Valiant released his grip on the counter in order to raise his right hand into a fist, drawn back to hit Merlin, and, really, how was it that the only thought in his head was that Arthur took a fucking long shower?

Then again, if Merlin had let scum like Valiant fuck him within hearing of his best friend, as a fucking _display_ for his best friend, he'd be feeling pretty unclean too.

"I'm not scared of you," he said, voice shaky with the lie, and as if that was Arthur's cue the sound of the shower cut off. "You've staked your claim, Valiant, as if there was ever any doubt in the matter. Besides, do you really think that Arthur's going to stick with you if he finds you threatening one of his mates?"

The fist hovered a moment longer, then hurtled towards Merlin's face, almost too quickly for him to close his eyes before it hit. He opened one after a moment, freezing in his flinch backwards, to find Valiant's fist just millimetres away from his cheek, the same frighteningly smug grin from earlier on his face.

"Relax, Merlin," he hissed, then broke into laughter, stepping back and then back again, picking up the kettle. "I'm just messing with you, man. Sit down, eat your breakfast. Tea? Coffee?"

"I'll pass," Merlin answered, then added a begrudging, "Thanks," because the bastard might have just been about to hit him ('just messing' with him? How dumb did Valiant think he was?) but that was no excuse for rudeness. Merlin sure as hell didn't intend to let Valiant keep him from his best friend – only Arthur had the power to get Merlin to clear off, and even then it probably wasn't going to happen – and if that meant he had to be just as civil to him as he'd always been, then that was what he was going to do.

Besides, there was a very big difference between threatening someone and following through on it, and another very big difference between threatening someone like Merlin and threatening someone like Arthur.

He sat, he ate breakfast, and if he found himself stuttering and blushing as soon as Arthur came into the room, if he ran as soon as he was finished eating because he couldn't even hear Arthur breathing without thinking of the other sounds he'd heard from him last night, because each time he looked at Arthur all he could see were the bruises on his neck, he wasn't going to stay gone.

And he sure as fuck wasn't going to let Valiant stop him from giving Arthur a hug when he left.

.

.

.

He didn't feel like going home.

If he'd been Arthur, he'd have gone to work.

If he'd been Gwaine, he'd have drunk.

If he'd been Morgana, he'd have spent a fortune on something he really didn't need, Gwen would have spoken to Elyan and Elyan would have gone down to the shooting range and filled a target full of bullet holes. Percival would lift weights, Leon would go for a run until his mind was clear and everything made sense, Lancelot would sit and think it through and decide, ultimately, that he had something to be guilty about.

But he wasn't any of them. He was Merlin, so he brooded.

He went to Will's.

.

.

.

He took chocolate. Other people took flowers, but Will always said they were girly; about the only thing he and Arthur had ever agreed on.

"I think something's wrong," he said, tracing over the writing on the headstone. He never bothered with a greeting; they hadn't when Will was alive, before the leukaemia, so why would they now? "It's Arthur. Or, not Arthur, but his boyfriend. He's..."

Merlin laughed, sort of, and it was so utterly inappropriate. You didn't laugh in graveyards, and you didn't laugh when telling one of your two best friends from childhood that your other best friend's boyfriend threatened to hit you.

"I think he's dangerous," he finished, quelling the absurd laughter.

"Right," he could imagine Will answering, not how he was at the end, sick and bald and stick-thin, but before that, when they were young and happy and Merlin spent half his time with Arthur and the other half with Will because the pair of them couldn't be in the same room without wanting to throttle each other. "Sure, Merls, but why?"

"Gwaine thinks I'm just jealous," he answered (or would, if the question had actually been asked). "Or he says he thinks that, anyway," because Gwaine saying something wasn't always a sign that he actually believed it.

"He was going to hit me," Merlin told his imaginary Will, sitting down on the grass, but he was a whole lot less certain of that fact than he'd been barely an hour ago, with Valiant's knuckles just barely grazing his cheek. "Valiant was going to hit me, I'm sure he was. But..."

He fell silent again, staring at his hands where they rested in his lap, then reaching out to pull a weed from the base of Will's headstone. "...But?" Will prompted.

"But...that's me, isn't it? I'm just Merlin, and Valiant hates me. It's not a big deal to threaten me." He pulled up another couple of weeds, then lamented that it was long enough since he'd been by for this many weeds to grow. It was well over a decade since Will died, almost half of that since his mum, his only family, passed on, and Merlin and Hunith were the only ones who visited. "It doesn't matter to him, because I don't matter to him. But Arthur does.

"He was warning me away from Arthur, Will. Marking his territory, trying to get rid of me." Merlin sighed, resting his head in his hands for a second before looking up again. "Valiant hates me because he loves Arthur and he knows I like him. But he wouldn't hurt him, would he? Arthur is...he's _Arthur_. He wouldn't stay if...he just wouldn't."

Merlin looked at imaginary-Will, and imaginary-Will looked back, his expression just as uncertain as Merlin felt.

.

.

.

"I can't ask him," Merlin said half an hour later. "He fought with Lancelot, this has to be what that was about, and he isn't happy with Morgana, either. I can't do that, Will. I can't just let Arthur push me away like he did them, not if I'm wrong about this. I need him too much."

Imaginary-Will stared at him blankly. "And if you're not wrong?" He asked.

Merlin nodded, standing up and brushing the grass from his arse. "I am," he said. "I have to be." He paused by the headstone again, tracing the date on it this time. _Too young_, he thought, as he always did. Twelve was no age to die. "Bye, Will. I'll tell Mum you send your love."

.

.

.

There was nothing quite like hiding out in his flat after a difficult day, Merlin thought. The door was locked, he had a good book to read, and a hot cup of tea on his bedside table. Peace and quiet, right?

So why couldn't he sleep?

Except, of course, he knew why.

If Valiant was willing to hit him, then he might be willing to hit Arthur too. And if he might possibly hit Arthur, it put a different spin on what Merlin had heard last night, too, didn't it?

_Fuck_, Merlin thought, chucking his book on the floor. He was going to have to talk to Arthur.

.

.

.

He was still wide awake when he heard the key scraping in the lock, somewhere around two, two thirty in the morning. He was still awake and, despite the day he'd had, not particularly worried; two people other than himself had keys to his house, and even if Valiant had somehow got hold of Arthur's keys, he wouldn't know which one opened the door, nor would he know the code that disabled the alarm. If it wasn't someone who was welcome, he'd have plenty of warning.

The door opening and closing was followed by a succession of beeps on the keypad for the alarm, then by the door relocking again. "Merlin?" Gwaine's voice hissed, accompanied by footsteps down the hallway to his bedroom, all navigated in the dark. "Merlin, you awake?"

"I am now," Merlin griped, but shuffled over to make room for him anyway, turning on the light on his bedside table to allow Gwaine to cross the room without tripping over something. "Seriously, who shows up at this time without warning a person?"

Gwaine kicked his trainers off, then shucked his jeans before wriggling into bed beside Merlin like this was any other night, like Merlin's mind wasn't completely fucked up with concerns about Arthur. "Couldn't sleep. Didn't think you'd mind."

"Hmm," Merlin answered, curling into Gwaine's side when he pulled the blankets up over them. "Do you want to talk about it?" _Please_, he hoped, because maybe Gwaine's problem would distract him from the one he was only half-sure Arthur had, the one he only wanted to be half-sure Arthur had.

"Not really," Gwaine said. "Just thought I'd see if you were up." He paused, burrowing further under Merlin's quilt and resting his head on the mattress rather than the pillows (weirdo; Merlin had never worked out how he managed to sleep like that). "Turn the light off?"

"Sure," Merlin agreed, resigning himself to lying awake the rest of the night. "Sleep well, I guess."

.

.

.

Gwaine was a fidgety git when he couldn't sleep, and he really hadn't been lying when he said he couldn't sleep. Three am passed, Merlin lying still and awake beside him, then half three. Somewhere in the region of four, when Merlin was finally on the verge of dozing off, Gwaine spoke again.

"Promise me something, Merlin," he said, half request and half demand, his hand clutching at Merlin's arm.

Merlin rolled over, peering at him in the darkness; much as he wanted to gripe at Gwaine for pulling him back from the edge of the sleep, there was something too serious to his voice for him to do so. Still, it didn't do to set a precedent. "Don't suppose it could wait until the morning, could it?"

"I'm serious, Merlin," Gwaine said, even more intense than before, if such a thing was possible. "Promise me, if I ever do something to hurt you, promise you'll leave me."

Merlin's stomach churned, and he shivered; Gwaine's words, after the thoughts he'd spent most of the day trying to get away from, hit him like a shovel to the face. "What? Why are you-"

"Promise me," Gwaine insisted. "Don't say I wouldn't, because that isn't the point. Just promise."

"Okay, I promise," Merlin granted, feeling the hand on his arm slacken, the tenseness of Gwaine's hold relaxing into a gentle stroke of his fingers, probably meant to be soothing. "Now, what's..." he paused, then shuffled closer, his thoughts stumbling to a halt. He shouldn't ask, because if the connection was only in his mind, Gwaine would want to know about it, would want to know why Merlin was making the link. He shouldn't ask, not about Arthur, not when there was still a chance he was imagining things, exaggerating things. He shouldn't... "Should I be worried, Gwaine?"

"About me beating you?" Gwaine asked, feigned outrage and not-quite-humour in his voice. "Merlin, I'm hurt that you'd even think that."

"Gwaine..." Merlin said softly, asking for seriousness without actually saying the words. "Do I have anything to worry about?"

He closed his eyes, counted the breaths and seconds that passed as he waited for Gwaine to answer. He knew pretty soon that the answer wasn't going to be _no_; an insincere denial would have been quickest, a sincere one only a little slower. _Yes_ wouldn't have come a whole lot after that, would have sounded hesitant but honest, would have had Merlin wondering what Gwaine knew and why he wasn't asking what Merlin was talking about, why he hadn't told Merlin without him needing to ask first. But Gwaine stayed quiet too long for his answer to be _yes_.

"I don't know," he whispered eventually, rolling over onto his stomach and pressing his face to Merlin's shoulder, a not-quite kiss to his neck. "I really don't know, Merlin."

That, Merlin thought, threading his fingers into Gwaine's hair, was probably about as much honesty as he could hope for.


	11. Any Other World

**Warnings:** Minimal, particularly compared to normal.  
**Rating: **T. Possibly even K+.  
**Notes: **Ugh. Struggling for a song for this one, and I meant to post it on Friday night. Sorry, forgot about it until this evening in the face of all the magical white stuff covering the ground outside (what? I have yet to get over the childish _oh-my-god-it's-SNOWING_ reaction. To hell with how difficult travelling is, it's _pretty_). This one is back to Arthur's POV, and it picks up the morning after both last chapter and the previous Arthury one. Next one...at some point. Peach.

_In any other world  
You could tell the difference.  
And let it all unfurl  
__Into broken_ _remnants._  
**Any Other World - Mika**

**Chapter Seven - In Any Other World**

"Are you quite sure you can't rearrange things, Arthur?"

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb, then dragged them upwards and apart, trying to rub away the headache building behind his brow. It was his own fault, he knew, and anyone waking up the morning after a day like the one he'd just had was an idiot if they weren't expecting a headache, but still. Phoning his father before ten in the morning wasn't helping matters, either, but it was best to get things like this over and done with. "I am, Father. My new secretary hasn't quite adjusted to the fact that brunch is _every_ Tuesday, not just those I tell her about, and she accidentally scheduled a meeting that clashes. I _am_ sorry."

And he was sorry, of that there was no question, but it was far more because he felt guilty about using Elena's occasional moments of less than stellar timekeeping as his excuse for skipping family brunch on Tuesday than because he wasn't going to be there. Arthur was certain that nothing would come of it – Uther rarely troubled himself to worry about anyone below a managerial position in the company, so much so that he hadn't even noticed that at just over three months in Arthur's employ, Elena hardly counted as new, and had in fact outlasted at least eighty five percent of Arthur's previous secretaries – but he still felt bad. He'd offer her a few days of holiday on Monday, Arthur decided, as compensation for being his unwitting alibi.

"Very well," Uther agreed. "There's nothing to be done about it. See that it doesn't happen again, though, and be sure she knows her job is forfeit if it does."

"Certainly, Father," Arthur replied obediently, and made a mental note to make that a week of holiday, paid, and preferably at a time when Uther was likely to be visiting Arthur at work. "Give my regards to Morgana, please, and I shall see you next week."

Arthur staggered down to the kitchen some time later, hair still dripping from his shower and head still thundering uncomfortably, to find that Val had made waffles for breakfast, sticky with syrup, and a pot of Arthur's extremely expensive coffee that was far too much effort for him to bother with usually. By the time he'd finished eating, he felt almost human again, and couldn't put things off any longer.

He stood in the living room for seconds that felt like hours, staring at the console on the floor in front of the TV, then picked it up and packed it away again in the cardboard box Merlin had put behind the sofa, far neater than it had been when he unpacked it. He left the flaps unstuck, because the only tape he could easily locate lived in the kitchen drawer where things like that always lived, next to scissors and birthday cake candles, toothpicks and batteries and light bulbs, and Val was still in the kitchen.

In an act of rebellion so small as to be meaningless, Arthur didn't say anything as he put on his trainers, snagged his car keys from the table by the front door and carried the box out of the house.

.

.

.

"Hmm," Gwaine said, opening the door to Merlin's flat and standing in the doorway. He reached out a hand, gripping Arthur's chin and turning his head to the side, frowning. "Looks worse in daylight."

His own hands full of cardboard box, Arthur couldn't exactly knock Gwaine's away, however much he wanted to. The alternative to letting the hand stay there was backing up, though, and that just wasn't happening. He said nothing.

"You'll not want to be coming in," Gwaine continued, when Arthur's intention to remain silent became apparent. "Unless, of course, you want Merlin to know you let your boyfriend hit you."

"When did you get here?" Arthur asked, ignoring the squirming in his stomach prompted by Gwaine's words. He was fairly certain that Gwaine would have said something if he'd been at Merlin's last night when Arthur phoned him, but he was spectacularly drunk enough that his memory of most of the evening wasn't grand.

Gwaine released his face, although his eyes still lingered on Arthur's cheek. "Couldn't sleep. Merlin gave me a key a while back, so I figured I might as well put it to good use. He wasn't exactly keen on me showing up in his bed at three am, but I brought him around." His tone was conspiratorial, smirk the same arrogance Gwaine wore as easily as he wore clothing (and, from some things Arthur had heard, probably easier), but his eyes didn't match, filled as they were with a cool, assessing distance.

_Find what you wanted?_ Arthur wanted to ask, but didn't. The answer wouldn't please him; he didn't need to know what Gwaine was looking for in his expression to know that he probably didn't actually want to know if it was there. "Here," he muttered, shoving the box at Gwaine. "Merlin forgot this yesterday."

"Yeah, he said he was in a rush to get out of there. 'Escape' was the word he used, I think. Still, I'm fairly sure he meant to leave it behind."

Arthur winced at the thought of what Merlin might have said to Gwaine and wondered when he'd said it, whether it was before Arthur had called Gwaine to pick him up or after, whether Merlin had phoned Gwaine as soon as he left Val's house or if he'd waited until seeing him in person. Whether Merlin talked with Gwaine about Arthur a lot, whether he talked with Gwaine about things he might once have told Arthur first.

"He shouldn't have," Arthur said, finding it so very difficult to meet Gwaine's eyes all of a sudden. "His dad gave him it, he should keep it here."

"Perhaps that's his choice," Gwaine answered, and Arthur didn't think he'd ever had a conversation with Gwaine where so many of his sentences were utterly without inflection. It had to be deliberate, of that he was sure – Gwaine never said anything the meaning of which couldn't be trebled by the particular tone in which he said it – but Arthur had no idea why.

He shook his head, tried not to shuffle his feet. "No, it's not."

"In that case, it had damn well better be yours."

"It is," Arthur told him, the words tasting ashy as they left his mouth. "Who else's would it be?" he added, a vague and distinctly blunt stab at blasé humour, the question sounding a whole lot more serious than he'd intended it to; another thing he didn't want to know the answer to, Arthur decided, and decided he'd had quite enough for now. "Tell him I'm sorry I couldn't stay long enough to talk."

He left it at that, making his way down the hall to the stairs – trust Merlin to live somewhere without a lift – with as steady a pace as he could manage. "Take care of yourself, Arthur," Gwaine called as Arthur took the first of many steps down. "Even if that sometimes means letting someone else do it for you."

.

.

.

_You'll not want to be coming in_, Arthur heard again as he drove back to Val's. _Unless you want Merlin to know you let your boyfriend hit you_.

The words had the same complete lack of emphasis in his mind as they did when Gwaine said them, but Arthur wasn't quite stupid enough to think that meant Gwaine didn't intend there to be one. The only question was what it was.

He ignored his instinctive flinch at the basic meaning of the words, pushing it down as he had the argument yesterday. Angry words and angry actions exchanged in the heat of the moment and nothing more, but Gwaine didn't know that. Gwaine had obviously meant something, and Arthur couldn't prove that he was wrong if he didn't know what it was.

_Unless you want Merlin to know _you_ let your boyfriend hit you_, he tested, but no. Too scornful, and while Gwaine's standard reaction to Arthur was scorn, it didn't particularly fit with the tone of the rest of the conversation.

_Unless you want _Merlin _to know you let your boyfriend hit you_, but that one went without saying. Merlin was...well, Merlin, and much as Arthur loved that most of the time, he had a habit of taking it upon himself to look after his friends, whether they wanted it or not. All good and well, obviously, but Arthur didn't need Merlin to look after him, didn't need the burden of explaining to him that it was all just a misunderstanding.

_Unless you want Merlin to know you let your _boyfriend_ hit you,_ but Gwaine wasn't in any position to judge where that was concerned. It wasn't like gender mattered to him, and this thing with Merlin kind of implied Gwaine was getting over his issues with commitment.

_Unless you want Merlin to know you _let_ your boyfriend hit you_.

Let. Letletletlet_let._

Arthur hit the button to turn the radio on, then turned the volume up as loud as it would go.

Let.

Letletletlet_let_.

(It didn't help)

.

.

.

Try as he might – and believe it, he _tried_ – Arthur couldn't get Gwaine's words out of his mind.

It was ridiculous, it really was, because Gwaine didn't know what the hell he was talking about. There was no need for Arthur to keep obsessing over it. Going out and getting wasted on the day of an argument with his boyfriend was fine, a mostly-appropriate thing to do, not at all an overreaction, but carrying on now that he was sober and it was a whole day later was not.

But the problem wasn't the argument, not really. The problem was what people kept assuming. The problem was _let_.

Arthur could understand Morgana and Lance worrying, even though they didn't need to, could understand Gwaine offering help in some weird, roundabout, Gwaine way, even though it wasn't necessary. What made him uncomfortable, what Arthur couldn't deal with, was that Gwaine said he _let_ it happen.

Arthur wasn't stupid. Sure, he wasn't a genius, not like Morgana, who got the lion's share of the brains in their family, but he wasn't an idiot.

Val had promised it wouldn't happen again, and Arthur had to – _wanted to_ – give him the benefit of the doubt. But he wasn't stupid, wasn't willing to give him too much benefit. He didn't want to end things, not when, for the most part, his relationship with Val was good, easy and comfortable and he loved him, he really did.

That was why he waited until Val was in the shower that evening before packing a bag, just a few essentials, jeans and shirts and underwear, enough to last a few days. He wasn't going anywhere, and he didn't intend to use it.

But it didn't hurt to have a fully packed bag lying under the bed, ready to grab when – _if_, not when, because Arthur wasn't fool enough to stay if he thought it was going to be a matter of _when_– things got rough again. It didn't hurt to be ready to leave at a minute's notice.

(What hurt was the inability to _stay_ gone)


	12. A Hurt, Lost and Blinded Fool

**Title: **Lonely Ghosts  
**Author:** EachPeachPearPlum  
**Disclaimer: **I'm just playing with them. Promise to put them back in the box when I'm done, (mostly) unharmed.  
**Warnings: **Doom and gloom and idiocy abound, as does foul language and very little else meriting a warning.  
**Notes: **For D, without whom this fic would probably be dead in the water. I know it's probably (almost certainly) not what you were hoping for, but there you go. Angst ahoy. Peach (And, to anyone who may or may not be interested, the title does come from the song at the start, even if it's not in the lyrics there).

_Oh, life, it's bigger,  
It's bigger than you_  
_And you are not me.  
The lengths that I will go to,  
The distance in your eyes.  
Oh, no, I've said too much._  
_I've said enough._  
**Losing My Religion - REM**

**Chapter Seven - A Hurt, Lost and Blinded Fool**

Arthur knew better than to dodge Merlin's calls again – _again,_ he made himself think; it wasn't _this time_ because that implied a pattern, danger, everyone knew patterns couldn't really be broken. Twice was fine, and _never again_, Val had promised, but if it was _this time_ then there'd be a _next time_ and no. It was _again._

(It wasn't)

Merlin disliked being ignored, tended either to get irritated quickly, stomping around making as much noise as possible until he got noticed, or to accept it, walk off alone and pretend it didn't hurt, pretend he wasn't begging inwardly for someone to come after him. With Arthur, it was always the former, but he'd seen the latter before, seen people who had failed to pay Merlin the attention he deserved, failed to go after him when he faded out, and he'd always wanted to hurt them for their idiocy. No sensible, sane person could ever let Merlin go.

So no, Arthur wasn't going to ignore Merlin's phone calls, not when the next step would be him bugging Elena, and the one after that would be him storming down to Arthur's work to see him or, far worse, to his and Val's home. He wasn't going to ignore him, but that didn't mean he particularly wanted to speak to him.

"Merlin," he said, picking up his phone on Monday morning, midway through composing an email to Elena instructing her to find him a meeting, any meeting, to attend tomorrow morning, in order to justify his excuse for avoiding his father and Morgana. "What can I do for you?"

Merlin, apparently, didn't know how to answer that, if the silence from his end of the phone was anything to go by. Arthur carried on typing; it was rude, perhaps, but if Merlin wasn't going to say anything then it didn't really matter if Arthur wasn't giving him his full attention.

"Merlin?" he asked a second time. "I don't have all day, you know."

Merlin cleared his throat, then spoke, sounding like the words were hurting him. "Yeah, sorry. I...wasn't sure you'd answer, actually."

That...wasn't what Arthur was expecting, and it probably wasn't good. If Merlin wasn't expecting Arthur to speak to him today, when the only other time Arthur hasn't spoken to him recently was after the first argument he had with Valiant, it...wasn't good. Patterns, patterns, and if Merlin could see them too...not good. "Why wouldn't I answer?" he bluffed, fairly sure – or at the very least solidly hopeful – that Merlin wouldn't call him on it.

"Hmm," Merlin said. Arthur could picture his doubtful expression, but he was right; Merlin didn't say why he might have been expecting silence. "Gwaine said you came by yesterday, but you didn't have time to come in."

Well, that was something at least, that Gwaine had the good sense to give Merlin a reason for Arthur to have stopped by and bolted, one that didn't involve mention of a bruise on his face that he didn't want Merlin to know about. "Val and I were heading out," he lied, not even able to convince himself it was anything other than that. "We were in a bit of a rush, but I thought you'd want your game back."

"Hmm," Merlin repeated; this time, the doubtful smile Arthur had imagined was on his face was replaced by something sad, rejected, but it was better than the alternative. Better that Arthur went to Merlin's rather than the pair of them needlessly aggravating Val by hanging out in his house. There were boundaries, after all, and just because everyone else either of them had ever dated had been understanding of their dependence on one another – because, sometimes, Arthur was mature enough to admit it went both ways, even if he'd never say it out loud – it was stupid to think everyone would be. "Thanks, I guess."

"I'll come by some time," Arthur promised. "I know what that console means to you, that's why I wanted you to have it back, but I'll come by and play it."

There was a moment, as Merlin answered, "Damn right you will," where Arthur's concern faded; Merlin sounded genuinely pleased for the first time since Friday evening, and the relief had Arthur almost slumping over onto his desk.

"That everything, then?" he asked, rather hoping for a _yes_, because it'd be nice to end the conversation on a high note, rather than whatever it'd be if Merlin said

"Um."

_Bollocks_.

"What, Merlin?" Arthur asked. "I really don't have time for-"

"It's what I heard," Merlin interrupted, the words scrambled like a bad omelette, sounding half-desperate to come out and half-desperate to never see the light of day. "On Friday, I mean, when I stayed over, and..."

"And what, _Mer_lin? What possible reason could you have to talk to me about..._that_?" Arthur winced; that sentence had started off so well, just the right measure of indignation and surprise, and ended so much less well.

The office fell quiet then, traffic noise from the road seeming to vanish, Arthur's hands freezing on the keyboard, Elena's bright chatter in the room outside tailing off into silence, and the only thing Arthur could hear was Merlin's breath and his own, both equally unsteady, equally fast, equally uncertain.

"Arthur," Merlin said, softly, gently, like he was talking to a skittish horse or crying child. "Arthur, did you want it?"

.

.

.

_Yes_, Arthur thought, the world rushing back in on him, _no_, sound slamming back down, agonising and rich, _I don't know_. His stomach churned, _not like that_, bile burning the back of his throat. _Not like that, never like that_.

"Do you think," Arthur's voice said, shaky but getting stronger, while Arthur himself tried to shake off the words he'd just thought, "Do you really think, _Merlin_, that I would ever do something I didn't want to?"

"No," Merlin said, far calmer than Arthur felt, even if he didn't actually sound all that calm at all. "Yes, I mean, _no_, of course not, but...I'm just worried, Arthur. I'm...Arthur, he was going to hit me."

Arthur felt his fingers loosen on his phone, his mind launching into overdrive and forgetting to tell him to hold his phone to his ear. His hand dropped, resting knuckles-down on his knee, Merlin's voice still chirping at him, tinny and distant. "Arthur? Arthur, speak to me, please. I don't want to cause trouble, I know you...you love him, but...I'm just worried. About you, I mean, and I need to know you're okay. Please, say something."

"Worry about your own relationship, Merlin," Arthur growled, phone back to his face again, needing to shut Merlin up, needing to get him to stay the fuck away, because he wasn't lying. Arthur wanted to accuse him of it – hell, he wanted to believe it of him – but he couldn't. He _knew_ Merlin, knew he wouldn't lie about something like this, and even though he didn't want it to be true it was. He could picture it, far too easily; Merlin in the kitchen with Valiant, looking at him like he wanted to ask questions like the one he'd just asked Arthur, and it didn't matter that Arthur had said the exact same thing to Val later that day, _made_, that Val had hit him for it, because he knew Merlin wasn't lying. Which meant Merlin had to stay the hell away from them, and telling him that explicitly was only going to make him ask why. "God knows Gwaine'll fuck anyone who stands still long enough, and dating you hasn't stopped him any."

"Arthur?" Merlin said, sounding wounded enough that Arthur almost wanted to take it back, but he couldn't, bloody well wouldn't. It was just as true as what Merlin had said, anyway, even if Gwaine was lessening his philandering ways, he was still cheating on Merlin; that Merlin chose to ignore it and no one else bothered to point out that he shouldn't stand for it didn't mean it wasn't true, and Arthur had to say it, anyway. If Val had hit Arthur, his boyfriend, the man he loved, what would he do to Merlin, a man he didn't give a damn about, if he said anything like that to him? He didn't care for Merlin, didn't have any reason to promise not to do it, and if Arthur didn't get him to stay the hell away he was going to get _hurt_, and he couldn't have that on his conscience.

"What, _Mer_lin? Just because everyone else ignores the fact that your boyfriend is a whore and that you're a cuckolded idiot, do you think I should as well?"

"Gwaine's not my...ugh, whatever, Arthur. It's not important, not at all. Why are you saying this?"

Because Arthur couldn't stand Merlin getting hurt and it being his fault, and if Merlin hated him then he wasn't going to be pissing off his boyfriend. "Because it's true, maybe?" Arthur snarled, envisioning Merlin's flinch as he cast his mind around for inspiration, then envisioning it fifty times as bad when he landed on something. "Although I can see why it doesn't bother you, when you're only with him because you can't do any better."

"Oh, like you have, you mean?" Merlin answered, and there was anger, just a little, not enough to keep Merlin safe. "You think Valiant is better? Tell me, when has Gwaine ever threatened to hit you, or ra-"

"Shut _up_, Merlin!" Arthur yelled, and again everything fell silent, although this time it was real rather than just in his mind; not the cars on the street or the ringing of phones elsewhere in the building, but the voices, the birds singing in the trees outside, Elena going about her business, those all ceased, and it felt like the whole world was listening to him. "You know what I think," Arthur continued, far quieter but with much more venom, remembering what Val had said before, about Merlin looking at him, and even if it was utter bullshit, paranoia on Val's part because he didn't know how much Arthur's cared for him, it was going to work. It was going to piss Merlin off enough that he'd stay away, at least until Arthur managed to find the words he'd need to convince Merlin that everything was fine.

"I think you're jealous, Merlin," Arthur said, and in hindsight he could hear how that remark made Merlin suck in a breath, short and unsatisfying, like he was waiting for Arthur to rip him to pieces. "I think you're trying to make this into something it isn't because you can't understand why I want him. I think you put up with Gwaine and his whoring because you know that whatever stories you create to explain why I'm with Val, I'm still not going to want _you_."

For what could have been seconds or hours, there was absolutely no sound from Merlin's end of the call, not even breathing, and...Shit, Arthur realised. Shit, shit, _shit_.

"I see," Merlin said slowly, interrupting Arthur's very much monosyllabic thoughts, and that shattering sound Arthur could hear? That would be his illusions cracking to pieces and falling to the floor, because this, this was Arthur realising just how massively he had fucked up.

_Oh, Merlin_, he thought, desperately wanting to take it back, because however much he wanted to hurt Merlin enough that he'd stay away from him, he would never hurt him like this, would never have said anything if he'd know it was true. "Merlin, I-"

"You could have just said I was overreacting, you know," Merlin said. "You didn't have to be such a colossal prat about it."

"Merlin, I'm sorry," Arthur said, but the line was dead already, and not one of Arthur's attempts to call back got an answer.

.

.

.

It felt like being stood up, the number of times Arthur tried and failed to get in touch with Merlin that week. It shouldn't have done, when he was the bastard who taunted Merlin about his feelings – yes, he didn't think Merlin actually had feelings for him, but that wasn't any excuse, particularly not when Arthur had just been thinking about how stupid people who hurt Merlin were – but it did, and it sucked.

Sure, Merlin and he had grown up fighting, both harmless bickering and actual fisticuffs – rarely, but occasionally their childish squabbles had ended in violence – but Merlin had never really ignored him for longer than half an hour, let alone almost a week, and it hurt. He deserved it.

Didn't mean he didn't miss him, though.

But, Arthur figured, he'd see Merlin on Friday, because Morgana's charity of the week was holding a pub quiz and she insisted on them all turning up, significant others in tow where applicable.

Apparently, though, seeing Merlin didn't equate to speaking to him, because as soon as Arthur and Val got there – for all he'd intended to be there early enough to ambush Merlin when he arrived, they'd still been late enough to be the last to get there – Morgana set to divvying them up into teams. Arthur found himself on one side of the room with Val, Lance, Gwen and Percival, while Merlin was with Morgana, Gwaine, Leon, and Elyan, almost as far away as possible without leaving the room, and every time he tried to get close to him Merlin would pretty much vanish, only to reappear what felt like miles away and deeply involved in conversation with someone else.

It didn't help that Gwaine was dogging Merlin's steps like a duckling, clearly able to tell Merlin was upset about something even if Merlin hadn't told him what. And he hadn't, that much was obvious, because whatever the status of Gwaine and Merlin's relationship, Gwaine was still Merlin's friend and as likely to object violently to someone hurting him as Arthur was. Arthur was still in one piece, so Gwaine clearly didn't know quite how much of an arsehole he'd been to Merlin on Monday, but he still wasn't letting Merlin wander off on his own, and it seemed it hadn't escaped his notice that Merlin was actively making an effort to avoid Arthur.

.

.

.

"Would you go back to your own table and stop trying to copy our answers, Arthur?" Morgana demanded – in all fairness, it was the fourth time she'd noticed him in the vicinity of her team, but Arthur wasn't really in the mood for being fair – covering their answer-sheet and glaring at him like a vengeful kid. "I swear, if you win because you've been cheating, I'm going to beat you to a pulp."

"Queue for that, ain't there, Arthur?" Gwaine called, sounding for all the world like it was a joke, even as Merlin and Morgana's eyes both shot to Arthur, the only time Merlin looked at him all evening. "I mean, Morgana ain't gonna be the only one pissed if you cheat."

Arthur forced a laugh – hoping no one noticed his hands curling into fists – and backed away, heading towards his own table, trying not to let his gaze linger too long on Merlin as he went.

(Needless to say, he failed)

.

.

.

_I'm sorry_, Arthur wrote, having resorted to scribbling on a napkin flirted scrounged from off the bar in order to communicate with Merlin – all his calls were ignored, messages were deleted, emails bounced back unread, and nothing seemed to be getting through to him. _Please, Merlin, I'm sorry_.

He dropped it on the table in front of Merlin, folded in half so the writing wasn't visible to the rest of them, then had to sit back in his seat next to Val and watch as Merlin opened it, scoffed disbelievingly, and proceeded to rip it to shreds, before standing up and walking out, without a goodbye to anyone, Gwaine running after him.

.

.

.

It didn't matter how hard he tried that evening, Arthur found himself soundly lacking in comfort. A hot bath, a good book, the supposedly ultimate cure-all that was a cup of tea, curling up in blankets and his boyfriend's strong

(frighteningly so, sometimes)

arms...nothing worked. Nothing was going to.


End file.
